North Korea fires missile for the first time in more than two months

TOKYO — North Korea launched a missile early Wednesday morning, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said.

This comes after more than two months without a missile launch in a year that has been marked by big advances and a steady salvo of launches, a pause that some hoped could allow diplomatic efforts to gain traction.

Wednesday’s missile was launched from South Pyongan province just before 3 a.m. local time and was fired to the east, South Korea’s joint chiefs said, according to the Yonhap News Agency. The South Korean military was still working to ascertain what kind of missile it was and how far it flew.

In response to the North’s provocation, the South’s armed forces conducted a “precision strike” missile launch, the joint chiefs said.

Emergency alerts were triggered in Japan, warning residents of the missile launch.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that President Trump “was briefed, while missile was still in the air, on the situation in North Korea.”

There had been signs that North Korea was preparing for another launch. The Japanese government had detected radio signals suggesting that North Korea might be preparing for a ballistic missile launch, Kyodo News reported Monday, citing government sources.

North Korea last fired a missile on Sept. 15, sending an intermediate-range missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It traveled for 2,300 miles in an easterly direction, landing in the Pacific Ocean.

North Korea was seeking military “equilibrium” with the United States as a way to stop American leaders from talking about military options for dealing with Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said after supervising the Sept. 15 launch.

That was the second launch over Japan in less than three weeks and came less than two weeks after North Korea exploded what was widely believed to be a hydrogen bomb.

Those events triggered ire overseas, with Trump denouncing North Korea’s regime during a speech to the United Nations General Assembly and mocking Kim as “little rocket man.”

That label triggered an angry and unusually direct response from the North Korean leader, who called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” and warned the U.S. president that he would “pay dearly” for his threat to destroy North Korea.

But despite an increase in tensions over the past two months, including a U.S. Navy three-carrier strike group conducting military exercises in the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, 74 days had passed without any missile launches by the North.

That was the longest pause all year, according to Shea Cotton, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. North Korea has now tested 20 missiles this year, compared with 24 by this time last year.

The pause had raised hopes that North Korea might be showing interest in returning to talks about its nuclear program.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations late last month, Joseph Yun, the State Department’s special representative for North Korea policy, said that if North Korea went 60 days without testing a missile or a nuclear weapon, it could be a sign that Pyongyang was open to dialogue.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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