North Korea launches ballistic missile toward sea

North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters on Wednesday, its southern neighbours have said.

It comes two days after North Korea threatened “shocking” consequences for what it called provocative US reconnaissance activity near its territory.

South Korea’s military detected the long-range missile launch from the North’s capital region around 10am, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement which said they had bolstered the country’s surveillance posture and maintained readiness in co-ordination with the United States.

Japanese defence minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters the North Korean missile was likely launched on a lofted trajectory, at a steep angle North Korea typically uses to avoid neighbouring countries when it tests long-range missiles.

Mr Hamada said the missile was expected to land at sea about 340 miles east of the coast of the Korean Peninsula, outside the Japanese exclusive economic zone.

Since 2017, North Korea has performed a slew of intercontinental ballistic missile launches as part of its efforts to acquire nuclear-tipped weapons capable of striking major US cities. Some experts say North Korea still has some technologies to master to possess functioning nuclear-armed ICBMs.

Before Wednesday’s launch, the North’s most recent long-range missile test happened in April, when it launched a solid-fuel ICBM, a type of weapon experts say is harder to detect and intercept than liquid-fuel weapons.

The launch, the North’s first weapons firing in about a month, came after North Korea earlier this week released a series of statements accusing the United States of flying a military plane on a spying mission.

The US and South Korea dismissed the North’s accusations and urged it to refrain from any acts or rhetoric that raise animosities.

In a statement on Monday night, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, claimed the US spy plane flew over the North’s eastern exclusive economic zone eight times earlier in the day. She claimed the North scrambled warplanes to chase away the US plane.

She said: “A shocking incident would occur in the long run in the 20-40 kilometre section in which the US spy planes habitually intrude into the sky above the economic water zone” of North.”

North Korea has made numerous similar threats over alleged US reconnaissance activities, but its latest statements came amid heightened animosities over North Korea’s barrage of missile tests earlier this year.