WASHINGTON – North Korea fired a ballistic missile that likely flew over Japan, the militaries of South Korea and Japan said Wednesday evening.
The unidentified ballistic missile was fired into the Sea of Japan, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed to NBC News.
The White House and Pentagon didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.
The most recent missile test comes as members of the United Nations Security Council convened a gathering to debate North Korea’s Oct. 3 test of an intermediate-range ballistic missile over northern Japan. The U.N. prohibits North Korea from testing ballistic and nuclear weapons.
There’s an alarming change in the best way that North Korea is approaching nuclear weapons, says Jeffrey Lewis, a professor on the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The missile traveled 2,800 miles, a distance that puts the U.S. territory of Guam inside its trajectory, before splashing down into the Pacific Ocean.
The provocative test prompted late-night calls from White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to his Japanese and South Korean counterparts. President Joe Biden condemned the missile test in a phone call with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Tuesday. Biden also discussed ways to “limit North Korea’s ability to support its illegal ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs,” in line with a White House readout of the decision.
The test, the primary in five years to fly over Japan, was answered with a volley of U.S. and South Korean missiles. The Pentagon said that the 4 missiles were launched into the waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula.
Up to now 10 days, Pyongyang has carried out five separate launches of eight ballistic missiles.
“Amongst these launches, the newest one was especially significant. It flew over Japan and impacted within the Pacific Ocean for the primary time since 2017. I assume we are able to all imagine how terrifying it have to be to see a missile flying overhead,” Ishikane Kimihiro, the Japanese ambassador to the United Nations, said before the Security Council.
“This is completely unacceptable, and Japan condemns it within the strongest possible terms,” he added.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the Biden administration “is not going to stand by” amid Pyongyang’s brazen missile tests.
“Despite an absence of engagement from North Korea, america stays committed to dialogue and diplomacy. The US, nevertheless, is not going to stand by as North Korea directly threatens america, our allies and all the world,” she said in remarks before the Security Council.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned the U.S. for calling the Security Council meeting and for participating in joint military drills with South Korea.
“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is watching the U.S. posing a serious threat to the steadiness of the situation on the Korean peninsula and in its vicinity by redeploying the carrier task force within the waters off the Korean peninsula,” the foreign ministry wrote in a press release.
Under Kim Jong Un, the reclusive state has conducted its strongest nuclear test, launched its first-ever intercontinental ballistic missile and threatened to send missiles into the waters near the U.S. territory of Guam.
Since 2011, Kim has launched greater than 100 missiles and conducted 4 nuclear weapons tests, which is greater than what his father, Kim Jong Il, and grandfather, Kim Il Sung, launched over a period of 27 years.
To this point this 12 months, North Korea has fired 39 ballistic missile tests.
