A statement from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the missile traveled around 500 miles from its launch site north of Pyongyang before crashing into the water. The second missile dropped off South Korean radar in mid-flight, leading officials to believe it exploded before reaching its target area.
Advertisement
The US State Department urged Pyongyang to refrain from any actions that could “further raise tensions”.
Existing UN sanctions ban North Korea from the use of any ballistic missile test, although short-range launches tend to go unpunished.
South Korea has also strongly denounced this latest missile launch, vowing to sternly deal with any provocations while maintaining complete defense preparedness.
The launches coincided with the joint US-South Korean military exercise Key Resolve, which ends today.
Taewoo Kim, a military expert at the South’s Konyang University, said it is likely that Friday’s launch was a test of a re-entry vehicle.
The latest test conducted by Pyongyang was the 6th test so far, following a nuclear test on January 6 and a satellite launch last month.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects nuclear facilities in this footage from North Korean Central Television.
North Korea said it had made a breakthrough in its pursuit of a long-range missile capable of striking the USA mainland.
At the same hearing, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter similarly condemned the North’s announced nuclear test and long-range rocket launch, although Pyongyang has said the satellite launch was for “peaceful” purposes, and a USA analyst has said the satellite appears to be partly functioning.
“We will make efforts to apply across-the-board pressure on the North so it will clearly realize that it can not survive without abandoning its nuclear and missile programs”, the ministry said in a statement.
The US and South Korea began conducting annual military exercises earlier in March, prompting the North to say it would “launch an all-out offensive to decisively counter the usa and its followers’ hysterical nuclear war moves”.
Chinese companies could also be targeted in the crackdown, United States officials said. “This is an inescapable fate of the U.S.in confrontation with the DPRK”.
Advertisement
“In the past, the battalion-level unit took 24 hours to be deployed across the Korean Peninsula, while the regimental-level unit took 48 hours”, an anonymous source revealed.
