Japanese Prime MInister Fumio Kishida said the missile landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone west of the northern main island of Hokkaido.
Japan’s Defense Ministry said the missile reached an altitude of 5,700 kilometers (3,541 miles) and flew a distance of about 900 kilometers (559 miles). It was launched from Pyongyang’s Sunan area around 5:22 p.m. local time Saturday, the South Korean JCS said.
Japanese officials said the missile flew for more than 60 minutes.
North Korea launched a missile last March with a slightly longer flight distance and time. That projectile was believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), its first test of such a missile since 2017.
In November, after another similar launch, Pyongyang announced the “test firing of a new kind” ICBM, which it called the Hwasong-17.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said at the time it had the potential to reach the US mainland. “The ICBM-class ballistic missile launched this time could have a range of over 15,000 km when calculated based on the flight distance of this ICBM,” Hamada said in a statement. “It depends on the weight of the warhead, but in that case, the US mainland would be included in the range.”
North Korea tests its missiles at a highly lofted trajectory. If they were fired at a flatter trajectory, they would in theory have the ability to reach the US mainland.
Earlier this month, the Kim Jong Un regime showcased almost at least 11 advanced ICBMs at a nighttime military parade in Pyongyang in the biggest display yet of what its state-run media described as North Korea’s “nuclear attack capability.”
Analysts said those missiles appeared to be Hwasong-17s.
Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said on social media that if each missile in the parade were equipped with multiple nuclear warheads, they could represent enough volume to overwhelm US ballistic missile defenses.
Saturday’s test came after the North Korean Foreign Ministry lashed out at the United States and South Korea on Friday over their plans for upcoming military exercises.
Washington and Seoul are expected to hold nuclear tabletop drills next week at the Pentagon, the South Korean Defense Ministry said Friday. The allies are also expected to hold military drills next month in the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea, in the same statement, also said it would consider additional military action if the UN Security Council continues to pressure Pyongyang “as the United States wants.”
In January, Kim Jong Un called for “an exponential increase of the country’s nuclear arsenal” and highlighted the “necessity of mass-producing tactical nuclear weapons,” according to the country’s state media KCNA.
Kim had called for the development of a new “Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system,” capable of a rapid nuclear counterstrike, according to the KCNA report.
