REUTERS - North Korea
test-fired a missile that failed immediately after launch early on Thursday,
the U.S. and South Korean militaries said, hours after the two countries
agreed
to step up efforts to counter the North's nuclear and missile threats.
The missile
was believed to be an intermediate-range Musudan and was launched from the
western city of Kusong, where the isolated state attempted but failed to launch
the same type of missile on Saturday, the U.S. Strategic Command and South
Korea's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The launch
came shortly after the United States and South Korea agreed in Washington to
bolster military and diplomatic efforts to counter the North's nuclear and
missile programs, which it is pursuing in defiance of U.N. Security Council
resolutions.
"We
strongly condemn the North's continued illegal acts of provocation," the
South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
Japan
condemned the launch and said it would make a formal protest to the North
through its embassy in Beijing.
The failed
missile launch was the eighth attempt in seven months by the North to launch a
weapon with a design range of 3,000 km (1,800 miles) that can be fired from
road mobile launchers, the two militaries said.
North Korea
has been pursuing its nuclear and missile programs at an unprecedented pace
this year.
In June, North
Korea launched a Musudan missile that flew about 400 km (250 miles), more than
half the distance to Japan, a flight that was considered a success by officials
and experts in South Korea and the United States.
North Korea
said on Thursday that it would continue to launch satellites despite its rival
South's objections, in a statement by its space agency carried by official
media.
TRUMP VS
CLINTON
Pyongyang says
it has a sovereign right to pursue a space program by launching rockets
carrying satellites, most recently in February, although Washington and Seoul
worry that such launches are long-range missile tests in disguise.
Impoverished
North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because
their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North
regularly threatens to destroy the South and its main ally, the United States.
News of the
North's latest ballistic missile launch broke during the third and last U.S.
presidential debate in which Republican candidate Donald Trump and his
Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, exchanged sharply contrasting views on U.S.
alliances.
Trump said
U.S. defense treaties around the world, including with South Korea, had to be
renegotiated because "we're being ripped off by everybody in the
world".
Clinton said
Trump wanted to tear up alliances that keep nuclear proliferation in check
while she believed alliances make the world and the United States safer.
"I will
work with our allies in Asia, in Europe, in the Middle East and
elsewhere," Clinton said
U.S. Secretary
of State John Kerry, speaking before the failed missile launch, said the United
States would do "whatever is necessary" to defend itself, South Korea
and other allies against North Korea.
Kerry and U.S.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter reaffirmed that any attack by North Korea would be
defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons "met with an effective and
overwhelming response," a joint statement said.
As part of the
military effort, Kerry said the United States would deploy the Terminal High
Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system to South Korea "as soon as
possible".
China strongly
opposes deployment of the U.S. system, saying it would impinge on its own
strategic deterrence.
South Korean
Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, also speaking in Washington before the failed
launch, said North Korea was nearing the "final stage of nuclear
weaponization" and the allies would mobilize "all tools in the
toolkit" to defend themselves.
A U.S.
aerospace expert, John Schilling, said this week in a report on the 38 North
project that despite the failures, the pace of testing could enable the North
to put the Musudan missile into operational service sometime next year.
Reuters
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