North Korea today launched a new ballistic missile that flew over Japan and forced to activate alerts asking the population to seek refuge in the Japanese prefectures of Niigata, Yamagata, both on the coast of the Sea of Japan, and Miyagi (northeast), NHK public broadcaster reported.
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The alert from the J-Alert system was issued around 7:46 a.m. local time (22:46 GMT) and the missile appears to have flown over Japan for a couple of minutes before heading to the Pacific, where it fell around 8:10 a.m. (23:10 GMT), according to the Coast Guard, while Japanese government sources indicated that no damage has been reported.
The launch, which has been confirmed by both the South Korean and Japanese military authorities, comes after Pyongyang fired around twenty missiles the day before, a record number for the regime in a single day, many of them ballistic missiles of short range (SLBM).
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The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) has so far limited itself to reporting that “North Korea has launched an unknown ballistic missile into the East Sea (the name given to the Sea of Japan in both Koreas)”, but sources cited by the Yonhap agency indicated that it could be an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) or even intercontinental (ICBM).
On October 4, North Korea fired an IRBM that flew over northern Japan before falling into the Pacific, in the first such incident since 2017, which also meant the longest distance traveled to date by a North Korean projectile ( about 4,500 kilometers).
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One of the projectiles that Pyongyang fired yesterday crashed in waters just 57 kilometers from the South Korean east coast, which is the first time in history that a North Korean missile crosses the maritime border and falls next to the territory of the neighboring country.
Seoul replied in turn by firing three air-to-ground missiles at waters along the northern coast, something also unprecedented, further increasing the tension that has already been felt for weeks in the region.
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The North Korean launches appear to be a response to large-scale air exercises that Seoul and Washington are carrying out in the region until Friday.
EFE
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