“North Korea’s ICBM launch likely ended in failure,” Seoul’s military said on Thursday, hours after the announcement of three missile launches fired by Pyongyang.
The first missile, fired shortly before 8 am (midnight in Paris), was headed for the Sea of Japan, to the east of the peninsula. The authorities quickly broadcast warning messages on Japanese radio waves, inviting the population to take shelter.
The alert was quickly lifted: the missile did not finally cross the archipelago, “but [a] they disappeared over the Sea of Japan,” Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said.
Two other “short-range” missiles
This “long-range” missile was called an “intercontinental ballistic missile” (ICBM) by Seoul, when it was initially considered an “unidentified missile”, explains the Yonhap news agency.
According to South Korean authorities, the missile was fired from the Sunan region, north of Pyongyang. This is the first ICBM launch from the north since the end of May, the Seoul military confirmed to Yonhap.
North Korea also fired two other “short-range” missiles on Thursday. By Wednesday, Pyongyang had already fired 23 missiles, one of which had crossed the “Northern Limit Line” (NLL) that extends the inter-Korean land border into the sea, remaining in international waters.
Source: BFM TV
