North Korea claims to have conducted its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, a development that, if confirmed, could move the regime closer to being able to strike the US mainland and dramatically strengthen its hand in negotiations with Washington.
The claim contradicts earlier reports by the US military that the north had test-fired an intermediate-range weapon. Analysts said data suggested the missile has the range to strike Alaska but not other parts of the continental US.
In a rare announcement on state Korean television, an emotional newsreader said the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had personally overseen the “landmark” test of a Hwasong-14 missile.
North Korea was now a “a strong nuclear power state” and had “a very powerful ICBM that can strike any place in the world”, the newsreader said.
She added that the missile had reached an altitude of 2,802km (1,741 miles) and flew 933km (580 miles) – longer and higher than any of the regime’s previous similar tests. Those figures roughly concurred with analysis by Japanese and South Korean officials.
While the apparent advancement in North Korea’s missile technology will add to concerns that the regime is moving closer to developing the capacity to strike the US mainland, many analysts still doubt whether it can miniaturise a nuclear weapon sufficiently to fit it onto a missile. They also believe the regime is unlikely to have mastered the technology needed for an ICBM to survive the re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
South Korea’s military confirmed that North Korea had fired an “unidentified ballistic missile” into the Sea of Japan – known as the East Sea in Korea – from Banghyon in North Pyongan, a province near its border with China.
North Korean missile test
The timing of North Korea’s 11th launch this year – on the eve of the US Independence Day holiday and just before the start of the G20 summit in Hamburg – was significant. It came soon after Donald Trump met the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, in Washington, and held telephone discussions dominated by Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes with Chinese president Xi Jinping and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe.
The missile landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the South Korean military and Japanese government said.
Tokyo strongly protested against what it called a clear violation of UN resolutions banning Pyongyang from developing ballistic missile technology.
The US Pacific Command said it detected and tracked the “single launch of a land-based, intermediate range ballistic missile” for 37 minutes near an airfield in Panghyon, about 100 km (60 miles) north-west of the North’s capital, Pyongyang.
That flight time would be longer than any similar previous tests. South Korean media reported that Seoul had not ruled out a test on an ICBM before Pyongyang’s announcement, but some analysts said it was more likely to have been a retest of one of two intermediate-range missiles launched earlier this year.
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said there had been no reports of damage to ships in the area as a result of the missile.
Tuesday’s launch came just hours after China’s ambassador to the United Nations warned of “disastrous” consequences if world powers fail to find a way to ease tensions with North Korea that risked getting “out of control”.
“Currently tensions are high and we certainly would like to see a de-escalation,” Liu Jieyo told a news conference at UN headquarters, where China holds the security council presidency this month. “If tension only goes up ... then sooner or later it will get out of control and the consequences would be disastrous.”
North Korea has increased the frequency of tests this year as it attempts to develop a missile capable of carrying a miniaturised nuclear warhead as far as the US mainland – a geopolitical game changer Trump has vowed “won’t happen”.
The same site was used to test the medium-to-long-range Pukguksong-2 ballistic missile in February. The regime’s most recent missile test before Tuesday came on 8 June, when it launched a new type of cruise missile that Pyongyang says is capable of striking US and South Korean warships “at will”.
David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said the initial assessments of the flight time and distance suggest the missile might have been launched on a “very highly lofted” trajectory of more than 2,800 km.
The same missile could reach a maximum range of roughly 6,700 km on a standard trajectory, Wright said in a blog post. “That range would not be enough to reach the lower 48 states or the large islands of Hawaii, but would allow it to reach all of Alaska,” he said.
Shea Cotton, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in the US, suggested the launch was deliberately timed to coincide with the anniversary of the US declaration of independence.
“It’s already 4th of July in North Korea,” he said on Twitter. “I somewhat suspect they’re shooting off some fireworks today specifically because of that.”
South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff immediately briefed the country’s president, Moon Jae-in, who has just returned from a summit with Trump in Washington.
Since taking office on 10 May, Moon has tried to push cautious engagement with Pyongyang, but the regime has continued its missile tests, insisting it has the right to develop a nuclear deterrent to counter what it calls growing military provocations by the US.
Trump and Moon agreed to apply “maximum pressure” to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, but agreed they were open to dialogue with the regime “under the right circumstances”. Trump declared the US had run out of patience with North Korea over its weapons programme. “Together, we are facing the threat of the reckless and brutal regime in North Korea,” he said. “The nuclear and ballistic missile programs of that regime require a determined response.”
On Monday, Moon told Barack Obama in Seoul that his meeting with Trump had been more successful than he had expected and included an agreement to strengthen the US-South Korea security alliance in the face of growing North Korean provocations.
Obama, who was in Seoul to attend the Asian Leadership Conference, said support for the alliance had bipartisan support in Washington. Kyodo News cited the conference’s organisers as saying Obama had described North Korea as a “rogue state” that will have to “face the consequences” if it continued to pursue a nuclear deterrent.
“We have to continue to strengthen the alliance between the United States and South Korea, but we also have to bring the wider global community to bring pressure on the regime,” Obama was quoted as saying.
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