SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea may have launched its largest intercontinental ballistic missile toward the sea Thursday, according to its neighbors, raising the stakes in a pressure campaign aimed at forcing the United States and other rivals to accept it as a nuclear and crippling power remove sanctions.
The launch, which expanded North Korea’s barrage of weapons tests this year, came after the US and South Korean militaries said the country was preparing to fly a new large ICBM, first unveiled in October 2020.
The South Korean military responded with live-fire exercises of its own land-launched missiles, a fighter jet and a ship, underscoring a resurgence in tensions as nuclear negotiations remain frozen. It confirmed readiness to conduct precision strikes against North Korea’s missile launch sites and command and support facilities.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters the United States has requested an open Security Council meeting to launch and looks forward to holding it on Friday.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North’s ICBM, which was fired from the Sunan area near the capital Pyongyang, covered a distance of 1,080 kilometers (670 miles) and a maximum altitude of over 6,200 kilometers (3,850 miles). ) achieved. The missile was apparently launched at a high angle to avoid reaching Japanese territorial waters.
Japan’s Deputy Defense Minister Makoto Oniki said the flight data pointed to a new type of ICBM.
“It is an unforgivable recklessness. We strongly condemn the act,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said after his arrival in Belgium at the Group of Seven meetings.
The missile flew 71 minutes before possibly touching down near Japanese territorial waters off the island of Hokkaido, Tokyo’s chief cabinet officer Hirokazu Matsuno said. Japan may be looking for debris in its exclusive economic zone to analyze the north’s technology, he said.
The Japan Coast Guard issued a warning to ships in nearby waters, but there were no immediate reports of damage to boats or aircraft. A Japanese fisheries organization released a statement denouncing the launch as a “barbaric act” putting fishermen’s lives and livelihoods at risk.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, during an emergency National Security Council meeting, criticized North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for breaking a self-imposed moratorium on ICBM testing and posing a “serious threat” to the region and the broader international community.
The United States strongly condemns the North’s launch, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, calling it a “blatant violation” of UN Security Council resolutions that threatens to destabilize the region’s security.
“The door to diplomacy has not closed, but Pyongyang must immediately halt its destabilizing actions. The United States will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and the Republic of Korea and Japanese allies,” she said, referring to South Korea’s formal name.
In Brussels, Kishida and President Joe Biden discussed the North’s launch on the sidelines of the G-7 summit, stressed the need for diplomacy and agreed to continue working together to hold Pyongyang accountable, the White House said.
Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said the flight data suggests the missile could reach targets as far as 15,000 kilometers (9,320 miles) away if launched on a normal trajectory with a warhead carrying a weight less than a ton is fired. That would put the entire US mainland within striking distance.
After a highly provocative spate of nuclear explosives and ICBM tests in 2017, Kim Jong Un suspended such tests in 2018 before his first meeting with then-US President Donald Trump.
North Korea’s resumption of nuclear brinkmanship reflects a determination to solidify its status as a nuclear power and wrest much-needed economic concessions from Washington and others from a position of strength, analysts say.
Kim may also feel the need to showcase his military accomplishments to his home audience while grappling with a broken economy made worse by pandemic border closures.
“Despite economic challenges and technical setbacks, the Kim regime is determined to improve its missile capabilities,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “It would be a mistake for international decision-makers to believe that the North Korean missile threat can be put on the back burner while the world deals with the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The Biden administration’s past passive approach to North Korea while focusing on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a deepening rivalry with China leaves more room for the North to step up its testing activities, some experts say. Government action on North Korea has so far been limited to largely token sanctions imposed over the latest tests and offers of open-ended talks, which Pyongyang rejected.
It was North Korea’s 12th round of weapons launches this year and came after it fired suspected artillery pieces into the sea on Sunday.
The North has also tested a host of new missiles, including a purported hypersonic weapon and the first launch since 2017 of an intermediate-range missile with the potential to reach Guam, a key US military center in the Pacific.
It also conducted two medium-range tests in recent weeks from Sunan, where the country’s main airport is located, which the US and South Korean military say included components of the North’s largest ICBM. The Allies had said the missile, which the North calls Hwasong-17, could soon be tested for full range.
These tests were followed by another launch from Sunan last week. However, the South Korean military said the missile likely exploded shortly after launch.
North Korea’s official media insisted that the two successful tests were aimed at developing cameras and other systems for a spy satellite. Analysts say the North is trying to simultaneously advance its ICBMs and acquire some level of space-based reconnaissance capability under the guise of a space launch, to lessen international backlash to those moves.
That launch could potentially come on a major political anniversary in April, the birthday of state founder Kim Il Sung, current leader Kim’s late grandfather.
The North’s earlier ICBMs showed potential range to reach the American homeland in three flight tests in 2017. The development of the larger Hwasong-17, first unveiled at a military parade in October 2020, may point to the goal of arming it with multiple warheads to overwhelm missile defenses.
At North Korea’s last ICBM test in November 2017, the Hwasong-15 flew about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) for about 50 minutes at a maximum altitude of 4,000 kilometers (2,400 miles). It wasn’t immediately clear if the missile from the last test was the Hwasong-17.
Denuclearization talks with the US have stalled since 2019, when the Americans rejected North Korea’s demands for a full sanctions lifting in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
Kim chaired a Jan. 19 meeting of the ruling Labor Party where Politburo members made a veiled threat to end its moratorium on ICBMs and nuclear tests, citing US hostility.
The South Korean military has also uncovered signs that North Korea may be rebuilding some of the tunnels at its nuclear test site that were blown up in May 2018, weeks before Kim met Trump for the first time.
——— Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo.