SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – In a first, North Korea on Tuesday fired a midrange ballistic missile designed to carry a nuclear payload that flew over Japan and splashed into the northern Pacific Ocean, officials said. The aggressive missile launch – likely the longest ever from the North – over the territory of a close U.S. ally sends a clear message of defiance as Washington and Seoul conduct war games nearby.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile traveled around 2,700 kilometers (1,677 miles) and reached a maximum height of 550 kilometers (341 miles) as it traveled over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The length and type of the missile test seemed designed to show that North Korea can back up a threat to target the U.S. territory of Guam, if it chooses to do so, while also establishing a potentially dangerous precedent of sending future missile tests over Japan.
Any new test worries Washington and its allies because it presumably puts the North a step closer toward its goal of an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can reliably target the United States. Tuesday’s test, however, looks especially aggressive to Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.
The North has conducted launches at an unusually fast pace this year – 13 times, Seoul says – and some analysts believe Pyongyang could have viable long-range nuclear missiles before the end of President Donald Trump’s first term in early 2021.
Seoul says that while the North has twice before fired rockets it said were carrying satellites over Japan – in 1998 and 2009 – it has never before used a ballistic missile, which is unambiguously designed for military strikes. The North also chose not to fire its most recent missile at a lofted angle, as it did in previous launches to avoid other countries. The South Korean military was analyzing whether the North had launched the Hwasong-12, a new intermediate-range missile that Pyongyang recently threatened to fire into waters near Guam, which hosts a major U.S. military base that the North considers a threat.