Japan and South Korea condemn North Korea’s missile launch

North Korea fired what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, South Korea said on Friday, a day after it launched a smaller missile and warned of “fiercer military responses” to the United States, increasing its regional security presence.

It has become a record year for the nuclear-armed country’s missile program after the North resumed testing ICBMs for the first time since 2017 and broke its self-imposed moratorium on long-range launches as denuclearization talks stalled.

Japan’s Coast Guard said the missile likely landed in the sea about 210 km west of Hokkaido. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said there were no reports of damage but that the North’s repeated missile launches could not be tolerated.

According to him, the missile appears to have landed within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

ICBMs are North Korea’s longest-range weapon and are designed to deliver a nuclear warhead to any location in the United States.

A day earlier, North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile as its foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, warned of “fierce military responses” to US moves to increase its military presence, saying Washington was making a “a bet you will regret”.

In a statement carried by state media, Choe condemned Sunday’s trilateral summit between the United States, South Korea and Japan, during which the leaders of those countries criticized Pyongyang’s weapons tests and pledged greater security cooperation.

Friday’s launch came while US Vice President Kamala Harris was in Thailand for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, amid geopolitical tensions over the war in Ukraine and other hot spots such as Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.