North Korea has fired what may be a ballistic missile, South Korean and Japanese officials said, after a seemingly quiet month without launches during the Beijing Olympics.
South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff reported on Sunday that North Korea had fired one suspected ballistic missile toward the sea off its east coast from a location near Sunan, where Pyongyang’s international airport is located.
The airport has been the site of missile tests, including a pair of short-range ballistic missiles fired on 16 January.
Japan’s defense minister, Nobuo Kishi, said Sunday’s missile may have flown as high as 600 km (400 miles), to a range of 300 km (200 miles). “There have been frequent launches since the start of the year, and North Korea is continuing to rapidly develop ballistic missile technology,” Kishi said in a televised statement.
Japan’s coast guard had earlier issued a maritime safety warning that said “an object possibly ballistic missile” was launched from North Korea and that it probably landed in the sea.
Vessels in the area were warned to stay away from objects that may have fallen from the air and to report them to authorities.
Pyongyang carried out an unprecedented seven weapons tests in January, including of its most powerful missile since 2017, when leader Kim Jong-un baited then-US president Donald Trump with a spate of provocative launches.
But the North paused testing during the Beijing Winter Games, possibly out of deference to its only major ally, China, analysts have said.
The US Indo-Pacific Command said: “We are aware of the DPRK’s ballistic missile launch this morning and are consulting closely with the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan, as well as other regional allies and partners. The United States condemns this launch and calls on the DPRK to refrain from further destabilising acts.”
North Korea also warned last month that it could abandon its self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear and long-range weapons, which have been on hold since 2017.
“This launch comes as the international community is responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and if North Korea is making use of that situation, it is something we cannot tolerate,” Kishi said.
South Korea’s National Security Council convened an emergency meeting to discuss the launch, which it called “regrettable”, according to a statement from the presidential Blue House.
The North’s fresh sabre-rattling comes at a delicate time in the region, as South Korea gears up to elect its next president on 9 March.
The leading conservative candidate, Yoon Suk-Yeol, warned last week that North Korea could see the Ukraine crisis as “an opportunity for launching its own provocation”.
Candidates and analysts have noted, however, that even before the invasion Kim Jong-un was overseeing an increase in missile tests.
“Putin’s war shapes almost all geopolitics right now, and should factor somewhere in Kim’s cauculus, but even ‘taking advantage of distraction’ seems to presume too much, since (North Korea) was already testing aggressively before the war,” John Delury, a professor at South Korea’s Yonsei University, said on Twitter.
Experts say Pyongyang could use its next key anniversary – the 110th birthday of Kim Il-sung on 15 April – to carry out a major weapons test.
There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon or the US state department on Sunday’s launch. Washington says it is open to talks with North Korea without preconditions, but Pyongyang has so far rejected those overtures as insincere.
Agence France-Presse, Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report
