The launch — reported by both South Korean and Japanese officials — comes a day after a smaller missile launch by the North and its warning of “fiercer military responses” to the US boosting its regional security presence.
This has become a record-breaking year for the nuclear-armed country’s missile program after it resumed testing ICBMs for the first time since 2017 and broke its self-imposed moratorium on long-range launches as denuclearization talks stalled.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters that the latest missile was capable of flying as far as 15,000km.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said that it flew to an altitude of about 6,000km with a range of 1,000km, before landing in the sea roughly 200km west of Oshima-Oshima Island in Hokkaido.
North Korea often conducts its tests on such “lofted” trajectories where the missile flies much higher into space, but to a shorter distance than it would if fired on a normal trajectory.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said there had been no reports of damage, but the North’s repeated missile launches could not be tolerated.
Misawa Airbase — which hosts both Japanese and US troops — briefly issued an order to seek cover, according to a post on the base’s Facebook page.