SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea has fired a long-range ballistic missile, the South Korean military said Wednesday, days after Pyongyang threatened to down U.S. 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.
South Korea’s military said it had detected the launch of a long-range ballistic missile from the Pyongyang area around 10:00 am (0100 GMT).
“The ballistic missile was fired on a lofted trajectory and flew 1,000 km (620 miles) 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.
Pyongyang last fired one of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles in April -- the purportedly solid-fuelled Hwasong-18 -- and in February launched a Hwasong-15, which flew a similar 989 kilometers.
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 percent certain that it was an ICBM launch,” Choi Gi-il, a professor of military studies at Sangji University, told AFP.
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 reconnaissance satellite into orbit, after a May launch failed.
A spokesperson for the North Korean Ministry of National Defense said the United States had “intensified espionage activities beyond the wartime level”, citing “provocative” spy plane flights over eight straight days this month.
“There is no guarantee that such shocking accident as downing of the U.S. Air Force strategic reconnaissance plane will not happen in the East Sea of Korea,” the spokesperson added.
Kim’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong said that a U.S. spy aircraft had violated the country’s eastern airspace twice on Monday morning, according to a separate statement.
Kim Yo Jong said North Korea would not respond directly to U.S. reconnaissance activities outside of the country’s exclusive economic zone, but warned it would take “decisive action” if its maritime military demarcation line was crossed.
The United States said in April that one of its nuclear-armed ballistic submarines would visit a South Korean port for the first time in decades, without specifying an exact date.
The missile launch came ahead of the second day of a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who are taking part in the summit, are scheduled to meet up with one another as well as other NATO leaders on the sidelines of the event on Wednesday.
jets were scrambled to ward off an American warplane that was detected inside the North’s 200-nautical-mile economic zone.