North Korea on Tuesday fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan, the Japanese Defense Ministry said, in a move that came just ahead of the U.S. presidential election and less than a week after an intercontinental ballistic missile launch.
At least seven short-range missiles flew a distance of 400 kilometers with an altitude of up to about 100 km after they were fired from North Korea’s west coast between around 7:30 a.m. and 7:39 a.m., the Japanese ministry said.
The missiles fell outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, in waters around the east coast of the Korean Peninsula.
The Japanese government lodged a protest against Pyongyang’s latest and recent firing of missiles, saying the “actions threaten the peace and security of Japan, the region and the international community” while violating U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Pyongyang apparently aimed to demonstrate an improvement in its military capabilities on the occasion of the U.S. presidential election, with the timing of the launch also seen as meant to show its opposition to a joint exercise by the United States, South Korea and Japan involving a U.S. B-1B strategic bomber on Sunday.
Kim Yo Jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister and a senior official of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, released a statement criticizing the joint military exercise, North Korea’s state media reported Tuesday.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command also condemned North Korea’s multiple ballistic missile launches Tuesday as well as the ICBM test-firing last Thursday.
“While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, or territory, or to our allies, we continue to monitor the situation,” it said, noting that it is consulting closely with Japan and South Korea.
The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven countries also condemned North Korea’s ICBM launch “in the strongest terms.”
They reiterated their call for “the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and demanded that North Korea “abandon all its nuclear weapons, existing nuclear programs, and any other weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner.”
Pyongyang’s test on Thursday of a missile potentially capable of reaching the U.S. mainland marked the longest-ever flight time for one of the country’s missiles, according to the Japanese government.
North Korea has said it was a Hwasong-19 and the “ultimate version” of an ICBM, flying a distance of over 1,000 kilometers for nearly 86 minutes, according to its state-run media.
Apparently launched on a lofted trajectory, the ICBM fell outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
