SEOUL: North Korea has fired a long-range ballistic missile, the South Korean military said on Wednesday, days after Pyongyang threatened to down US spy planes that violated its airspace.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points ever, with diplomacy stalled and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un calling for increased weapons development, including tactical nukes.
In response, Seoul and Washington have ramped up security cooperation, vowing that Pyongyang would face a nuclear response and the "end" of its current government were it to ever use its nuclear weapons against the allies.
South Korea's military said it had detected the launch of a long-range ballistic missile from the Pyongyang area around 10:00 am.
"The ballistic missile was fired on a lofted trajectory and flew 1,000 km before splashing down in the East Sea," the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan.
A lofted trajectory involves firing a missile up and not out, a method Pyongyang has previously said it employs in some weapons tests to avoid flying over neighbouring countries.
The launch "is a grave provocation that damages the peace and security of the Korean peninsula" and violates United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang, the JCS said, calling on North Korea to stop such actions.
The United States and its allies, including France, also strongly condemned the launch.
"This launch is a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions and needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilising the security situation in the region," National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said in a statement.
The flight time of around 70 minutes is also similar to some of North Korea's previous ICBM launches, experts said.
"Given what we have at this point, it's about 90 per cent certain that it was an ICBM launch," Choi Gi-il said, a professor of military studies at Sangji University.
He added that it could also have been North Korea trying to re-test its satellite launch technology to prepare for another attempt to put a spy satellite into orbit, after a May launch failed.
Wednesday's launch came after North Korea on Monday accused a US spy plane of violating its airspace and condemned Washington's plans to deploy a nuclear missile submarine near the Korean peninsula. — AFP
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