The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the South Korean Armed Forces said that North Korea launched a ballistic missile towards the East Sea.
Today, Sunday, the agency announced that it was analyzing the details of the launch.
The launch came 3 days after the launch of an ICBM that the North claimed was launched on March 16, hours before the Korea-Japan Tokyo Summit.
The new missile appears to come in clear protest against the ongoing joint South Korean-US military exercise Freedom Shield, which began on March 13 and will run until the 23rd of that month.
For his part, Japanese Deputy Defense Minister Toshiro Inoue said in a press statement that Japan had protested through diplomatic channels to North Korea over the latest missile test, which “poses a threat to the security of the region.”
He emphasized that “North Korea’s ongoing missile tests pose a threat to the security of our country, region and the entire international community and are absolutely unacceptable. We protested against North Korea through diplomatic channels through the embassy in Beijing.”
The rocket covered a distance of 800 km, reached a maximum height of 50 km and fell outside the exclusive economic zone of Japan.
North Korea launched two cruise missiles from a submarine on March 12, the day before the exercise, and a short-range ballistic missile on March 14.
Source: Yonhap