North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile that appears to have failed in flight, in an attempted show of force about a week after it struck a military pact with Russia that alarmed the U.S. and its allies.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The missile was launched at about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday from an area near Pyongyang and is presumed to have failed shortly after it was fired, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a message sent to reporters. An analysis was being done by South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities to find out more details, it said.
Read More: Putin and Kim Embrace New Era of Alliance, Signing Mutual Defense Pact in North Korea
The missile launched Wednesday morning appears to have come down in waters outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone, officials in Tokyo said. Further details on the flight were not immediately available and it’s the first launch since Kim Jong Un’s regime fired off a simultaneous barrage of short-range ballistic missiles in late May.
North Korea has largely avoided missile failures over the past few years as Kim has rolled out a new array of rockets capable of carrying nuclear warheads and designed to strike the U.S. mainland as well as America’s allies Japan and South Korea. It has suffered setbacks with its rockets for deploying satellites, with its latest attempt in late May ending in failure when the rocket broke apart in a fireball soon after its launch.
Before the latest missile test, North Korea assailed the U.S. for sending the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier group to the Korean Peninsula for joint training drills that included Japan and South Korea.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited the aircraft carrier Tuesday as it was docked in the southeastern city of Busan. He said the visit was meant to show Kim the U.S. commitment to deploy its nuclear umbrella to protect his country, formally known as the Republic of Korea.
North Korea has denounced joint drills as a prelude to invasion and bristled at U.S. aircraft carrier groups positioned off South Korea.
“The DPRK bitterly condemns the provocative attempts of the US and the ROK, the heinous confrontation maniacs with the most powerful rhetoric and with all possibilities of demonstrating its overwhelming and new deterrent force,” the official Korean Central News Agency on Monday quoted Vice Defense Minister Kim Kang Il as saying. He used abbreviations to refer to North Korea and South Korea by their formal names.
On the same day, the U.S. and its allies Japan and South Korea condemned in “the strongest possible terms” the deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, calling it a grave concern and a threat to stability.
Top envoys from the three nations discussed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim’s agreement, announced last week, to come to each other’s defense in case of attack, according to a joint statement released by the U.S. State Department. The pact was made during the Russian leader’s first visit to North Korea in 24 years.
Read More: Putin’s North Korea Visit Reeks of Desperation, Not Strength
The U.S. and its Asian allies have said they saw the visit as advancing the transfer of munitions from Kim’s regime to help Putin’s war in Ukraine. The pact likely means the U.S. and its allies will have to recalculate what might happen if they use weapons against North Korea.
Earlier this week, North Korea sent a new batch of balloons carrying trash across the border into South Korea after Seoul said it detected parasites such as roundworms in the contents of previous dispatches.
