North Korea’s ballistic missile launch appears to have failed: Seoul

North Korea on Thursday unsuccessfully fired an intercontinental ballistic missile during a new salvo of launch, the South Korean military said, as Washington urged all countries to impose sanctions on Pyongyang.

Responding to the launches, South Korea and the United States said they would expand their ongoing joint air exercises, the largest such exercise – a move Pyongyang immediately branded “an irreversible and terrible mistake”.

People in parts of northern Japan were ordered to take shelter during the North’s latest launches, which involved five short-range missiles and after a spate of projectiles fired on Wednesday.

The South Korean military said Thursday’s largest-ever launches were “considered to have ended in failure”.

The United States condemned the ICBM launch, while the G7 club of wealthy nations said it condemned the flurry of missiles “in the strongest possible terms”.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called the ICBM launch “illegal and destabilizing” and termed the North’s actions “irresponsible and reckless” during a joint news conference with his South Korean counterpart Lee Jong-sup at the Pentagon.

Austin issued a stern warning to Pyongyang that “any nuclear attack against the United States or its allies and partners” would result in “the end” of Kim Jong Un’s regime.

Washington confirmed information provided by the South Korean military, which said it had detected the launch of a long-range ballistic missile at approximately 7:40 a.m. (2240 ​​GMT Wednesday) in the Sunan area of ​​Pyongyang.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the ICBM – which flew about 760 kilometers (470 mi) at an altitude of 1,920 kilometers – failed during a “second stage separation”.

The Army of the South also discovered that “two short-range ballistic missiles believed to have been fired from Kachon in South Pyongan Province at around 8:39 am”.

According to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, three more short-range ballistic missiles were fired later that day into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of ​​Japan.

South Korea’s military “maintains a fully prepared posture, cooperating closely with the US and strengthening surveillance and vigilance”, it said.

‘Shocked and scared’

Pyongyang fired more than 20 missiles on Wednesday, one of which landed near South Korean territorial waters, prompting an air strike on Ulluungdo, an island about 130 kilometers off the country’s east coast.

“We were shocked and horrified, because this had never happened before. We didn’t know where to take shelter,” said Chae Young-sim, a 52-year-old shopkeeper from the island.

A short-range ballistic missile crossed the northern border line, the de facto maritime boundary, on Wednesday, prompting South Korean President Yoon Suk-yol to call it “effectively a territorial offensive”.

The launches come as Seoul and Washington have their largest joint air exercise, involving hundreds of warplanes from both sides.

Pyongyang has called the exercise Vigilant Storm, “an aggressive and provocative military exercise targeting the DPRK”.

The exercise was due to end on Friday, but South Korea’s air force said on Thursday that the joint exercise would be extended in response to the latest launches.

Pyongyang said it was “a very dangerous and wrong choice” and warned that “provocative military actions” by Washington and Seoul were taking the situation to “an uncontrollable phase”.

“The United States and South Korea will realize what an irreversible and terrible mistake they have made,” Pak Jong-chon, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said in a statement carried by news agency KCNA.

Japan confirmed the launch on Thursday, with the government issuing a special warning to residents of the northern regions to stay indoors or seek shelter.

Tokyo initially stated that the ICBM had flown over Japan, issuing a “J-alert”, but Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada later stated that “the missile did not cross the Japanese archipelago, but Japan”. of disappeared over the ocean”.

‘Strategic nuclear exercise’

Washington and Seoul have repeatedly warned that the North’s recent missile launches could result in another nuclear test – Pyongyang’s seventh test.

“They are ready to conduct nuclear tests,” but the timing is still unclear, Lee said in a news conference with Austin.

Chad O’Carroll of Seoul-based specialist site NK News said on Twitter that this would be “followed by a fairly possible tactical nuclear weapon test(s). Possibly very soon.”

North Korean studies scholar Ahn Chan-il agreed.

“These are pre-celebrations ahead of North Korea’s upcoming nuclear test,” he told AFP.

“They also seem like a series of practical tests for their strategic nuclear deployment.”

North Korea revised its laws to allow pre-emptive nuclear strikes in September, with Kim declaring the country an “irreversible” nuclear power – effectively ending talks over its banned weapons programs.

On 4 October, North Korea fired a missile over Japan, giving an evacuation warning. North Korea fired a missile at Japan for the first time since 2017.

Pyongyang later claimed that the launch and a blizzard of other tests around the same time were a “strategic nuclear exercise” that bombarded South Korea with nuclear-tipped missiles.

(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)