N. Korea fires another missile over Japan
By Park Si-soo
North Korea fired another missile over Japan and into the Pacific on Friday, officials from Seoul and Tokyo said.
The launch came after the United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions against the country over its missile and nuclear provocations.
“North Korea fired an unidentified missile from near Sunan, Pyongyang, around 6:57 a.m. It flew over Japan to the North Pacific,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement.
The missile flew some 3,700 km, with its maximum altitude reaching some 770 kilometers, the JCS said.
South Korea and the United States are jointly studying further information, it said.
Right after the launch, Cheong Wa Dae convened a National Security Council meeting.
The latest provocation sent a clear message to the world that the Kim Jong-un regime will continue to carry out its missile and nuclear provocations on its internal schedule, showing that Kim is unfazed by the international condemnation of country’s sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in a televised address that the missile flew over Hokkaido. "We cannot accept these repeated provocative acts by North Korea,” Suga said. “We have lodged our firm protest and while communicating the strong anger from the Japanese public. We expressed our condemnation using the strongest of terms."
The launch of another missile came just hours after President Moon Jae-in has said he is opposed to South Korea having its own nuclear weapons to counter North Korea’s nuclear threat.
“I don’t agree that Seoul needs to develop our own nuclear weapons or redeploy U.S. tactical nuclear weapons here to deter North Korea’s nuclear threat,” Moon said in an interview with CNN Thursday, ahead of his visit to New York next week for the United Nations General Assembly.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been briefed on North Korea's launch of an unidentified missile over Japan, according to White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
"The President has been briefed on the latest North Korea missile launch by (president's chief of staff) General Kelly," Sanders said.