According to South Korea’s chiefs of staff, three projectiles — two short-range missiles followed by an ICBM — were fired by the Pyongyang regime toward the Sea of Japan on Thursday, November 3. “North Korea’s launch of an ICBM would likely have ended in failure” during the separation of the missile’s second stage, the South Korean army said.
According to the latter, this ICBM has traveled a distance of 760 km at a maximum altitude of 1,920 km and a speed of Mach 15 (15 times the speed of sound). The other two rockets flew about 330 km at Mach 5 and a maximum altitude of 70 km. Air raid sirens sounded on the South Korean island of Ulleungdo, 120 km east of the Korean Peninsula, for the second straight day, local media reported.
“The continuous rocket fire day after day is a crime and cannot be tolerated,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Thursday. The launch “underscores the need for all countries to fully implement Security Council resolutions” sanctioning North Korea, said US State Department spokesman Ned Price. On October 4, a North Korean ballistic missile flew over Japan for the first time in five years.
As of Wednesday, North Korea had already fired 23 missiles, one of which crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which extends the inter-Korean land border at sea, while remaining in international waters. It then conducted around a hundred artillery barrages near the inner-Korean border in the east of the peninsula. The South had fought back by launching three missiles at sea, near the area where one of the North’s projectiles had landed.
According to the South Korean military, it was the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953 that a North Korean projectile ended its course so close to southern territorial waters.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said Wednesday the shooting constituted “a de facto territorial invasion.” Authorities in the south have shut down several air corridors over the Sea of Japan to “ensure the safety of passengers on routes to the United States and Japan guarantee”.
This show of force by Pyongyang comes as South Korea and the United States are conducting the largest air exercises in their history in the region. North Korea sees this type of maneuver as a dress rehearsal for a future invasion of its territory.