North Korea fired
at least
one long-range ballistic missile
on Saturday , the South Korean military said, ahead of joint US-South Korean exercises planned for next week in Washington.
"The South Korean army detected a launch, which is believed to be that of a long-range ballistic missile, into the East Sea from the Sunan area in Pyongyang at 5:22 p.m. (8:22 GMT) today, February 18," the official said. South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in a statement.
"North Korea's launch of a long-range ballistic missile is
a serious provocation that harms peace and stability on the Korean peninsula
" and is a "clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions" , concluded the JCS in its most recent statement.
Japanese government sources quoted by the NHK public broadcaster indicated that the missile appears to have been launched at a very wide angle and to have fallen in the waters of the Japanese exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
The Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, condemned the launch and indicated that
the missile seems to have fallen about 200 kilometers west of the island of Oshima
, around 18:27 local time (9:27 GMT), so it would have flown for more than an hour before crashing into the sea.
For his part, the Japanese Defense Minister, Yasukazu Hamada, said in statements to NHK public radio television that the missile appears to have the capacity to have flown some 14,000 kilometers, enough to practically reach almost the entire
US territory
.
Sunan, where the international airport of the North Korean capital is located, is the place from which the regime has launched on more than one occasion its
Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the one with the longest potential range within its arsenal
.
Kim Jong-Un has been carrying out a weapons modernization plan since 2021.
Photo: EFE/KCNA.
On February 8, the regime led by Kim Jong-un paraded for the first time what appears to be a new solid-fuel ICBM,
a more efficient type of missile
that it set out to develop after approving a weapons modernization plan in 2021.
Solid fuel makes loading and storage safer and facilitates the deployment of the projectile.
This Saturday is
the second launch that Pyongyang has carried out so far this year
, after it fired a short-range projectile on January 1 from a large multiple rocket launcher.
The day before, North Korea threatened an "unprecedented" response to the military exercises that South Korea and the United States have planned for March, which next week will also carry out a theoretical exercise that simulates a nuclear attack by the North Korean regime.
North Korea carried out a record number of missile launches last year - around fifty - in many cases in response to joint maneuvers by Seoul and Washington and the deployment of strategic Pentagon assets on the peninsula.
Satellite photos also show that the Punggye-ri nuclear test center (northeast of the country) has been completely rehabilitated for almost a year and is ready to host a new atomic test.
Source: AFP and EFE
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