North Korea raises tensions with missile launch into Sea of Japan

North Korea tested what appears to be its longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile ever on Thursday, breaking a self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile launches and raising tensions in East Asia.

South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said the missile reached an altitude of more than 6,000km – the highest a North Korean missile has ever flown – and flew for about 71 minutes to a range of 1,080km from its launch site near Pyongyang’s international airport.

The projectile landed in the Sea of Japan within the Japanese exclusive economic zone 170km west of the northern prefecture of Aomori, according to the Japanese coastguard. The sea is known in Korea as the East Sea.

Moon Jae-in, South Korea's outgoing president, "strongly condemned" Thursday's launch, describing North Korea's long-range missile testing as a "serious threat".

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Hours after the launch, the South Korean military fired multiple missile systems as part of a “joint ground-sea-air missile” exercise.

South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said the exercises demonstrated “capability and preparedness to conduct a precision strike against a missile’s launch point, command and support facilities anytime should North Korea fire a missile”.

Japan's prime minister Fumio Kishida described North Korea's test as an "unacceptable act of violence". He said Pyongyang's repeated launch of ballistic missiles "threatens the peace and security of our country, the region and the international community".

It was North Korea's first test of a long-range ballistic missile potentially capable of reaching the US mainland since 2017 – a period of confrontation with the US during which then-president Donald Trump threatened "fire and fury" on the East Asian country.

Two people familiar with details of the test said the ICBM travelled to a much higher altitude than previous missiles, suggesting North Korea had increased the theoretical range of its ballistic missile arsenal.

“This is the longest-range potential ICBM that North Korea has ever tested,” said Ankit Panda, a nuclear weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It could be due to a reduction in payload weight to test out new fuel storage technologies, or because it’s a new, large missile.”

‘Choppy waters’

Christopher Green, senior consultant for the International Crisis Group, said deteriorating US relations with Russia and China had probably emboldened Pyongyang and that the region was heading into "choppy waters".

“Although UN resolutions forbid all kinds of ballistic missile tests, the truth is that the only ones that make the US and its allies sit up and take notice are long-range,” Green said.

Thursday’s launch, North Korea’s 12th missile test this year, demonstrates the progress of its missile development programme and follows two tests of ICBM-related rocket systems in February and early March. Those tests were described by US officials as a “serious escalation” amid signs that Pyongyang was testing elements of a new system ahead of a possible long-range missile test.

Thursday's missile test came as Admiral John Aquilino, the top US commander in the Indo-Pacific region, was visiting Australia as part of the US effort to work even more closely with allies to tackle threats from China and North Korea.

"The United States condemns these actions and calls on the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] to refrain from further destabilising acts," the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.

Analysts said that Thursday’s test could mark the start of a new period of confrontation after years of moribund diplomacy following the collapse in 2019 of a summit in Hanoi between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“North Korea wants to re-establish itself as a serious international issue following the failure of its diplomacy in 2018-19,” said Green at the International Crisis Group.

He added that while there had been broad international consensus behind sanctions on Pyongyang after its 2017 ICBM test, collapsing US-Russia relations over Ukraine and Beijing's intensifying competition with Washington meant North Korea now faced "little risk of punishment for this kind of test". – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022