North Korea fires ICBM as neighbours meet at Nato summit

Seoul/Tokyo — North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) off its east coast on Wednesday, prompting condemnation from leaders of South Korea and Japan who met on the sidelines of a Nato summit.

The launch came after heated complaints from North Korea in recent days accusing American spy planes of violating airspace in its economic zones, condemning a recent visit to South Korea by an American nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine, and promising to take steps in reaction.

The ICBM flew for 74 minutes with a range of 1,000km, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, said, in what would be the longest flight time yet for a North Korean missile.

Japan’s Coast Guard had predicted the missile would fall about 550km east of the Korean peninsula.

In April, North Korea test fired its first solid-fuel ICBM, one of around a dozen missile tests in 2023. Analysts believe the North’s ICBMs can fly far enough to strike targets anywhere in the US, and the country is likely to have developed nuclear warheads that can fit on rockets.

“It could be a second test of the solid-fuel Hwasong-18 ICBM, building on the results of its first launch,” said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

Yang Uk, a fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the latest test could be part of the North’s efforts to save face and retake the initiative after a failed launch of its first spy satellite in May.

Pyongyang’s accusations of US airspace breaches this week, which Washington and Seoul dismissed as groundless, are likely to build justification for the launch, Yang said.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is in Lithuania for the Nato summit, convened an emergency national security council meeting to discuss the launch and vowed to use the summit to call for strong international solidarity to confront such threats.

Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held separate talks and strongly condemned the launch as a grave violation of multiple UN resolutions and a serious provocation that escalates tension.

Kishida, describing the missile as an ICBM, said it threatens peace and stability in the region and beyond, and requires closer co-operation between the two neighbours and with the US.

Yoon, at an earlier meeting with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, said: “We cannot condone these provocations, and we must respond to North Korea’s reckless actions through strong responses and solidarity of the international community.”

Leif-Eric Easley, an international studies professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said North Korea is following a pattern of staging weapons tests in time for diplomatic events such as the Yoon-Kishida summit.

With a wary eye on North Korea’s military moves and other rising challenges in the region, Yoon has moved to repair frayed ties with Japan and reduce historical disputes that have limited co-operation between the two US allies.

Nuclear envoys of South Korea, the US and Japan held a phone call on Wednesday to strongly condemn the North’s missile launch as a serious provocation that can “never be justified”, Seoul’s foreign ministry said. They also criticised Pyongyang’s recent threats against what they described as the allies’ normal flight activity in international waters.

The three countries’ top military generals gathered for a rare trilateral meeting in Hawaii just before the missile launch.

Reuters