Japan military on alert for possible North Korean ballistic missile launch

The US military detected a missile launch from North Korea, Navy Commander Dave Benham, a spokesman from the USA military’s Pacific Command, confirmed.

A day earlier, South Korea warned that action would be taken at the global level should the North launch another missile. Their arrival has become a bitter point of contention between the rival Koreas, with Seoul saying they defected and chose to resettle in South Korea on their own and Pyongyang insisting they were kidnapped by South Korean spies.

Concern was raised over the weekend when South Korea’s state spy agency said Islamic State has called for attacks by revealing the locations of 77 USA and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation air force installations, including Osan and Kunsan air bases, on messaging services.

An official at South Korea’s defense ministry told Xinhua that what was believed to be a Musudan missile flew about 400 km after having been fired from the DPRK’s Wonsan area in the east coast at about 8:05 a.m. local time.

When senior official Ri Su-yong visit to China last month also concided with an attempted Musudan missile launch. “If it were a ballistic missile launch, it clearly can not be tolerated”, Abe said, broadcaster NHK reported.

Seoul’s National Intelligence Service is detaining them at a “care center” for North Korean defectors, a different institution from Hanawon, where new arrivals can be interrogated and trained to adjust to life in the South. Another launch, most likely of the Musudan, failed in May.

Usually, North Korean defectors are sent to the Ministry of Unification’s Settlement Support Center for North Korean Refugees, or Hanawon, in Anseong, Gyeonggi, where they undergo resettlement education for around 12 weeks to get used to living in the South.

Earlier Tuesday, at a Washington briefing, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said that if North Korea were to conduct another missile test, it “would be another violation of United Nations resolutions”. South Korea held fast to its position that no dialogue would be held with the DPRK unless Pyongyang shows its denuclearization will through honest actions. It was unclear what happened in the latest firing. “So we certainly would urge North Korea to refrain from doing that sort of thing”.

Tension in the region has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and test launches of various missiles, including one in May.