Status: 03.11.2022 04:41 a.m
North Korea has again fired several ballistic missiles. According to South Korea, one of them was an ICBM.
North Korea has once again detonated several ballistic missiles. One of the missiles may have been an ICBM, South Korea and Japan said. North Korea has also launched at least two short-range missiles.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada later said the government had lost sight of the missile over the Sea of Japan, after which it corrected its earlier announcement that it had flown over Japan. The projectile fell in the Pacific Ocean around 1100 kilometers east of Japan, the Japanese broadcaster FNN quoted government circles as saying.
ICBM missiles have the longest range in North Korea’s arsenal and can be equipped with a nuclear warhead.
Japan, South Korea and the USA have sharply criticized missile tests
In a telephone conversation, South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong and his US counterpart Wendy Sherman condemned the renewed launches as “regrettable and immoral,” the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said North Korea’s repeated missile launches “cannot be forgiven at all.”
North Korea increases frequency of missile tests
Japan and South Korea have a history of misjudging North Korean missile tests, said Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), one of the impartial think tanks on international affairs. “Neither country has the highly reliable and desirable space-based infrared sensors available to the United States, which provide instant detection of rocket stages upon firing,” Panda said.
In early October, North Korea fired a missile that flew over the Japanese archipelago for the first time in almost five years. The government in Pyongyang fired at least 23 rockets towards the sea on Wednesday. A missile crossed the de facto maritime border and landed off the coast not far from South Korean territorial waters. The North Korean missile launches this week were triggered by joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States.