SEOUL, Nov 18 (Reuters) – North Korea fired what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, South Korea said on Friday, a day after it fired a smaller missile and warned of “fierce military responses” to United States to increase its regional security presence.
This has turned into a record year for the nuclear-armed country’s missile program, after it resumed ICBM tests for the first time since 2017 and broke its self-imposed moratorium on long-range launches when the denuclearization talks stalled.
Japan’s Coast Guard said the missile likely landed in the sea about 210 kilometers (130 miles) west of Hokkaido.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said there had been no reports of damage, but that the North’s repeated missile launches could not be tolerated. He said the missile appeared to have landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
ICBMs are North Korea’s longest-range weapon and are designed to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the continental United States.
A day earlier, North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile as its foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, warned of “fiercer military responses” to moves by the United States to increase its military presence, saying Washington was making a “bet it will regret.”
In a statement carried by state media, Choe condemned a trilateral summit on Sunday of the United States, South Korea and Japan during which the leaders of those countries criticized Pyongyang’s weapons tests and pledged greater cooperation on of security.
North Korea has conducted a record number of ballistic missile tests this year, banned by United Nations Security Council resolutions that have sanctioned the country for its missile and nuclear weapons programs.
Friday’s launch came as US Vice President Kamala Harris was in Thailand for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, amid geopolitical tensions over the war in Ukraine and other flashpoints such as Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.
LONG RANGE MISSILES
ICBMs are ballistic missiles with a minimum range of about 5,500 kilometers (3,400 mi), designed primarily for the delivery of nuclear weapons. Some are capable of traveling 10,000 km (6,200 miles) or more.
Some missiles carry only one warhead, but analysts suspect North Korea is looking to develop ICBMs that can carry multiple warheads, each capable of navigating to a separate target point, on independently steerable reentry vehicles (MIRVs).
North Korea’s last suspected ICBM test was on Nov. 3, when it fired multiple missiles into the sea in what it said was a protest against allied military exercises by South Korea and the United States.
Based on photos released by state media, analysts said the Nov. 3 launch appeared to be a previously unseen ICBM, possibly a variant of the Hwasong-15 ICBM, which was first tested in 2017 and which could also have been released in March.
A South Korean official said the Nov. 3 test may have failed at high altitude. South Korean and US officials have reported that a series of North Korean ICBM tests appeared to have failed this year.
North Korea claimed to have successfully launched its new Hwasong-17 massive ICBM for the first time on March 24, but South Korean and US officials concluded that the launch appears to have been the Hwasong-15 launched previously
The March 24 launch was nevertheless the North’s longest-ever ICBM test, flying for 67.5 minutes at a maximum altitude of 6,248.5 km (3,905 miles), state media reported North Korea
The North has also fired hundreds of artillery barrages into the sea recently as South Korea and the United States conducted drills, some of which involved Japan.
Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Edmund Klamann
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