The short-range missile – assumed to be a Scud – landed in Japanese waters, prompting a strong response from Tokyo. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said his country will join the US in taking concrete action against Pyongyang, stressing that they “will not tolerate North Korea’s continued provocations that ignore repeated warnings by the international community”.
North Korea has defied a UN resolution banning all nuclear and missile activity, ramping up the pace of its tests in recent months. It has fired 12 missiles during nine tests in 2017, the latest of which flew about 450km and appears to have landed inside Japan’s economic zone where fishing and cargo ships are said to be active.
Abe described the launch as a provocation and said leaders at the recent G-7 meeting confirmed that deterring North Korea’s nuclear ambitions was a “top priority for the international community” and that Japan would work closely with the US and South Korea to “make the utmost efforts to ensure people’s safety”.
Concerns were also raised about the spot where the missile landed. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the ballistic missile launch by North Korea was “highly problematic from the perspective of the safety of shipping and air traffic and a clear violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions”.
Condemning the launch, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea called a meeting of his top security officials to discuss the matter, while the White House said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the launch. Russia, too, condemned the latest missile launch and called upon the world community for restraint.
Hours later, Trump tweeted that North Korea had shown “great disrespect” for its neighbour, China, by shooting off yet another ballistic missile. “But China is trying hard!” he said. Interestingly, the US president had put forward a similar view – of North Korea disrespecting China – after an earlier missile test, too, to express his disapproval of Pyongyang.
The analysts also point out that North Korea is known to test missiles both to improve their accuracy and efficiency and when the government comes under growing pressure. In this case, the latter could well be the case as the G-7 leaders issued a statement recently saying the North Korean government “increasingly poses new levels of threat of a grave nature to international peace and stability”.
On the other hand, others believe the latest test has to do more with North Korean efforts to strengthen its military against any possible threat from the US. The priority is to make the technology stronger as quickly as possible to show their ability to defend themselves against the Trump administration.
While the US administration works to solidify a policy to deal with North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the new liberal president of South Korea has signalled he will be flexible in expanding civilian exchange with the North. However, some analysts say Moon will probably not push for any major rapprochement projects because North Korea “has gone too far on its nuclear programme”.
