North Korea says test launch of new missile type a success

Turkey’s foreign ministry on Sunday “strongly” condemned North Korea’s test-firing a ballistic missile.

North Korea launched a missile into its eastern sea on Sunday, according to the South Korean military.

Over this five-year period, North Korea has conducted four progressively larger nuclear tests and more than 50 ballistic missile launches.

The new missile was also successfully tested for its ability to dodge interceptors with evasive maneuvers, Yonhap news agency cited the statement as saying.

It came as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the US President were golfing in the so-called Winter White House of Mar-a-Lago, Florida. “We are assessing and will have more information soon”.

In what is the first test of the kind such the beginning of Trump’s presidency, the missile traveled eastward to about 300 miles from the North Korean coast before landing in the Sea of Japan, testing President Trump’s resolve in following his campaign rhetoric of toughening policies on North Korea.

As it is now clear that the Trump administration is maintaining a hardline approach, it is no surprise that Pyongyang is “going back to its old playbook” of using missile provocations to see if the United States would respond to its demands, said research fellow Go Myong Hyun of The Asan Institute for Policy Studies. The most recent attempt to launch an intermediate-range ballistic missile, which failed, was within hours of a USA presidential debate in October.

A State Department official told CNN: “We are aware of reports and monitoring the situation carefully”. Currently, North Korea has this capability in East Asia and therefore is an existential nuclear threat to South Korea and Japan, our two closest allies in East Asia. It flew some 500 kilometers, which is much shorter than the Musudan missile’s estimated range of around 3,000 km.

Retired Lt. General Mark Hertling said the test was a step toward an intercontinental ballistic missile.

At this time, no other details around the launch have been confirmed by either the South Korean side or United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which has only confirmed that a launch occurred, but not yet specified a missile type.

North Korea’s media and officials have made no statements so far to confirm the launch.

North Korea is barred under United Nations resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology but six sets of United Nations sanctions since Pyongyang’s first nuclear test in 2006 have failed to halt its drive for what it insists are defensive weapons.

The National Security Council convened an emergency meeting to discuss the missile test on Sunday.