North Korea missile launch ends in rare failure, Seoul says

A North Korean ballistic missile launch toward the Sea of Japan appeared to have ended in a rare failure early Wednesday, South Korea’s military said, as a U.S. aircraft carrier visited the South for joint exercises.

Japan’s Defense Ministry also detected the launch of at least one ballistic missile, with the weapon flying for more than 200 kilometers (125 miles) and splashing down after flying just minutes after its launch was detected, far outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its coast.

The short flight time indicated the weapon may have been a short-range missile.

A South Korean military source told the Yonhap news agency that the weapon appeared to have been a hypersonic missile, but the test is believed to have ended in failure after it flew some 250 km.

North Korea has unleashed a spate of weapons tests and drills in recent months, with just a handful of failures — an indication, analysts say, of the progress Pyongyang has made with its missile program despite crushing U.N. and unilateral sanctions on the isolated country.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visits the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier on Tuesday as it makes a port call in the city in Busan, South Korea.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visits the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier on Tuesday as it makes a port call in the city in Busan, South Korea.
| YONHAP / VIA AFP-JIJI

Earlier this week, Pyongyang criticized the deployment of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier to the port city of Busan for joint drills with South Korea and Japan, warning of an “overwhelming and new deterrent force.”

The launch came a week after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a “strategic partnership treaty” that included a mutual defense pledge, upgrading relations to a level that Kim said was on the same level as a formal alliance.

Japan, South Korea and the United States on Monday condemned “in the strongest possible terms” deepening military cooperation between North Korea and Russia.

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