North Korea fires suspected long-range ballistic missile, South says | CNN

Seoul, South Korea
CNN
—

North Korea has fired what appears to be a long-range ballistic missile from the Pyongyang area into waters off its east coast, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Wednesday, marking a possible new round of confrontation with Seoul and Washington.

The Japan Coast Guard said the missile was launched at 9:59 a.m. local time and fell into the Sea of ​​Japan, also known as the East Sea, at 11:15 a.m., citing the Defense Ministry. He warned ships in the drop area to be careful and watch for more information.

Flight time, if confirmed, would be similar to that of North Korean missiles tested in march and April of this year. Both were intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), weapons with the range to hit the continental United States.

Wednesday’s launch comes after Pyongyang threatened earlier this week to shoot down US military reconnaissance planes flying over nearby waters in the East Sea.

Kim Yo Jong, a senior North Korean official and sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, accused a US spy plane of entering the North’s exclusive economic zone at least eight times on Monday, according to a statement released Tuesday by the state-run news agency. North Korean KCNA news. .

“In the event of a repeated illegal intrusion, US forces will experience a very critical flight,” Kim warned in the statement.

The missile launch and fiery rhetoric, while not unusual in Pyongyang, comes amid escalating tensions as Washington and Seoul step up their defense cooperation and the leaders of South Korea, Japan and the United States meet. meet in Lithuania for a nato summitwhere North Korea was on the agenda.

A statement from the NATO meeting on Tuesday urged North Korea to abandon its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs, which violate United Nations Security Council resolutions banning them.

“We call on (North Korea) to accept the repeated offers for dialogue made by all parties involved, including Japan, the United States and the Republic of Korea,” the statement said.

But North Korea has given no sign that it is willing to enter into negotiations with Washington or Seoul.

“Kim Yo Jong’s bellicose statement against US surveillance planes is part of a North Korean pattern of inflating external threats to rally domestic support and justify weapons tests,” said Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

“Pyongyang is also timing its shows of force to disrupt what it perceives to be diplomatic coordination against it, in this case, the meeting of the leaders of South Korea and Japan during the NATO summit,” Easley said.

Last month, tens of thousands of North Koreans marched in anti-American demonstrations in Pyongyang, marking the 73rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War. The participants denounced the US as a “destroyer of the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula” and warned of nuclear war, according to KCNA.

Meanwhile, South Korea, the United States and Japan have been holding joint and trilateral military exercises aimed at deterring any military threat from North Korea.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.