With ICBM launch, Japan sees dramatic shift in North Korean missile testing

North Korea confirmed a test of a powerful “new type” of long-range missile, state media reported Friday, with Japan’s defense chief calling Thursday’s launch a dramatic departure from previous tests.

Leader Kim Jong Un hailed the successful launch, saying his country was preparing to buckle down for the “inevitability of (a) long-standing confrontation with the U.S. imperialists.”

The new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), dubbed the Hwasong-17, flew higher and for a longer duration than any of the missiles previously tested by North Korea, before splashing down in Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) just 150 kilometers off the coast of Hokkaido.

Kim personally gave the launch order, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, and photos accompanying the report showed him dressed in a black leather jacket and dark sunglasses, dwarfed by the massive weapon — dubbed a “monster” missile by analysts — as he inspected the site.

In touting the first successful full-scale test of an ICBM in four years, Kim said the new weapon will “make the whole world clearly aware of the power of our strategic armed forces once again.”

The launch signified a clear departure from Kim’s self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile tests, which had been in place since 2017, setting the stage for a fresh showdown over the country’s nuclear weapons program.

It also demonstrated that Kim has no intention of letting Washington and its allies forget about deadlocked negotiations and the crushing sanctions he has so far managed to weather — even as U.S. President Joe Biden traveled to Brussels for meetings with NATO and Group of Seven leaders to discuss the war in Ukraine.

KCNA reported that Kim had ordered the test Wednesday, quoting the North Korean leader as saying that “the root cause of the daily escalating military tension in and around the Korean Peninsula … stems from the inevitability of the long-standing confrontation with the U.S. imperialists accompanied by the danger of a nuclear war.”

He also vowed to continue “bolstering the powerful nuclear war deterrence qualitatively and quantitatively,” adding that the North “would as ever focus all state efforts on bolstering the defense capabilities on a top priority basis,” KCNA reported.

“The strategic forces of the DPRK are fully ready to thoroughly curb and contain any dangerous military attempts of the U.S. imperialists,” Kim said.

“Any forces should be made to be well aware of the fact that they will have to pay a very dear price before daring to attempt to infringe upon the security of our country,” he added.

The KCNA report said the missile, launched from Pyongyang’s International Airport, had hit a “maximum altitude of 6,248.5 km and flew a distance of 1,090 km” for about 67 minutes before “accurately hitting the preset area in open waters” of the Sea of Japan.

The timing of the latest launch has unnerved Japan, with top officials calling the test “a serious threat to the peace and stability” of Japan, the region and the international community.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said that the ICBM launch was a “serious threat” and “a departure from the series of previous launches.”

“Depending on the weight of the warhead, (the new missile) has a range of 15,000 km, which would include the entire continental United States,” Kishi said.

“This is an unacceptable outrage and I condemn it, unequivocally,” he added.

On Thursday, the Defense Ministry said that the missile had been fired in a lofted trajectory, or almost straight up, traveling roughly 1,100 km for about 70 minutes and hitting an altitude of around 6,000 km — making it more powerful than the North’s Hwasong-15 ICBM, which was last tested in November 2017.

By comparison, the Hwasong-15 traveled a distance of 950 km for 53 minutes and hit an apogee of 4,475 km.

North Korea has launched several missiles that have fallen into Japan’s EEZ, which extends 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its coast, but Japanese officials said Thursday that the latest test, which fell into waters west of the Oshima Peninsula, may have landed the closest ever to the Japanese archipelago.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, visiting Brussels for a meeting of Group of Seven leaders, and Biden strongly condemned the launch, with the two vowing to work together to hold North Korea accountable while stressing the need for diplomacy, a White House official said.

Kishida, alluding to the possibility of additional sanctions on Pyongyang, had earlier said he would look to coordinate with G7 members in responding to the North’s repeated ballistic missile tests, which are violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The Security Council plans to hold a formal meeting on Friday in New York to discuss North Korea’s recent missile launches, the council’s public schedule showed.

The Kim regime is already subject to a series of onerous sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs.

The launch — the North’s 12th round of weapons tests this year — was also roundly condemned by outgoing South Korean President Moon Jae-in and President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, who warned Pyongyang on Friday that “there is nothing that can be gained from provocations.

“The Republic of Korea will safeguard freedom and peace by building a stronger security posture,” Yoon wrote on his Facebook page.

The White House on Thursday said the launch “needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region.”

Still, the U.S. held out hopes for a return to denuclearization talks, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying that “the door has not closed on diplomacy, but Pyongyang must immediately cease its destabilizing actions.”

Denuclearization talks between the U.S. and North Korea have been stalled since 2019. Biden has repeatedly said that his administration harbors no “hostile intent” toward Pyongyang and is prepared to meet “unconditionally” with a goal of “the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

But Kim has appeared uninterested in Biden’s pitch, condemning the U.S. offers as a “petty trick.”

Observers say the North Korean strongman has no intention of relinquishing his nuclear arsenal, as he believes it is key to his regime’s survival. Instead, he has ordered his regime to double down and prepare for a “long-term confrontation” with the United States.

Such a strategy would almost certainly mean more provocative weapons tests in the coming weeks and months, especially of ICBMs capable of delivering nuclear bombs to American cities.

“The more frequently Pyongyang can demonstrate this capability, in particular, the greater confidence it will have that the U.S. may be deterred from escalating any crisis,” said Andrew O’Neil, an expert on North Korea and a professor at Griffith University in Australia.

In January last year, Kim unveiled a five-year plan to expand his atomic arsenal, including smaller “tactical” and “supersized” warheads, as well as “pre-emptive” and “retaliatory” strike capabilities that would allow North Korean nuclear bombs to “strike and annihilate” targets 15,000 km away.

“Kim Jong Un is ticking off a nuclear checklist — which he made public in January 2021 — that included a monster ICBM capable of firing multiple nuclear warheads. Terrifying,” Jean Lee, a North Korea expert at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington, wrote on Twitter.

The U.S. and its allies had warned in recent weeks of an imminent long-range missile test. Washington said earlier this month that North Korean launches on Feb. 27 and March 5 were intended to test elements of the Hwasong-17. Experts say the powerful weapon could be armed with multiple bombs, potentially allowing a single missile to drop nuclear warheads on different targets in a bid to better penetrate defenses.

Some experts think that Kim’s willingness to break his moratorium with an ICBM launch could signal a belief that he can test ever more advanced weapons as the international community remains laser-focused on its response to the war in Ukraine.

“I suspect the next period will be turbulent because Kim and his senior elites may well calculate that the U.S. is preoccupied in Europe” and that the Biden team won’t respond to North Korean weapons testing other than by saying it keeps the door open to unconditional negotiations, said O’Neil.

However, he stressed that it was unclear how Washington would respond to further provocations, including a return to nuclear testing.

Satellite imagery taken earlier this month of the country’s Punggye-ri facility, its sole known nuclear testing site, showed construction had been taking place for the first time since it was closed in 2018.

A resumption of nuclear testing has long been seen as a red line for Washington and Tokyo. Pyongyang has conducted six nuclear tests, including its last in 2017, which experts say produced an explosion roughly 16 times bigger than the one created when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima in 1945.

The North Koreans “will have to tread carefully here because the U.S. response is actually hard to predict in the current climate,” O’Neil said.

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