North Korea has fired a missile into the Sea of Japan, with the latest provocative actfrom Pyongyang coming just days before US President Donald Trump meets
his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
The Pentagon said North Korea had fired the missile at 6.42am local time on Wednesday and that it had landed in the sea nine minutes later. It said the rocket, believed to be a medium-range missile that could not reach the US, was fired from a land-based facility near Sinpo.
Seoul said the projectile, likely to be “a type of KN-15 medium-range ballistic missile”, also known as Pukguksong-2, travelled about 60km before landing in the sea.
The launch comes as Mr Trump prepares to host Mr Xi at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in their first meeting. North Korea is expected to be one of the top issues on the agenda.
“North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile,” Rex Tillerson, US secretary of state, said on Tuesday. “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.”
Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, condemned North Korea’s move.
“There is clearly potential for more provocative actions,” he said. “In close co-ordination with the US and South Korea, we will act thoroughly to protect the life and property of citizens, whatever situation may arise.”
South Korea convened its national security council and vowed to respond strongly to any further provocations, condemning the missile launch as a “blatant” challenge to UN resolutions banning North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities.
Last month North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, with three landing within 300km of Japan’s coast. Another launch later in March ended in failure.
Many experts believe that North Korea has not yet mastered the technology that would allow it to hit the US mainland with a nuclear-armed missile. But the Pentagon operates under the working assumption that Pyongyang already has the capability on the grounds that US intelligence agencies may have underestimated the progress that North Korea has made.
The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Mr Trump plans to urge China to put more pressure on Pyongyang to convince the regime to abandon its nuclear programme.
In an interview with the FT, Mr Trump said: “China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. If they do, that will be very good for China and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone.”
But Mr Trump made it clear that the US was prepared to act alone if China did not do more to tackle the threat from Pyongyang and Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator. “Well if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you,” he said.
Mr Trump has made North Korea his top foreign policy priority after Barack Obama told him following his election that Pyongyang posed the most imminent national security threat to the US. In a separate interview last Friday, KT McFarland, the deputy White House national security adviser, said the threat from North Korea had reached a critical juncture.
“There is a real possibility that North Korea will be able to hit the US with a nuclear-armed missile by the end of the first Trump term,” she told the FT.
Speaking ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, which will take place on Thursday and Friday, a US official said Mr Trump would “be sending a clear signal to Mr Xi”. He said Washington hoped Beijing would work closely with the US to step up the pressure on Pyongyang, including by taking a more aggressive approach to enforcing UN sanctions. But he made clear that the US was watching the Chinese response very closely.
“This is in some ways a test of the relationship,” the official said.
Michael Auslin, an Asia expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said Mr Kim was trying to create “yet another mini crisis atmosphere” before the Trump-Xi summit.
“From another perspective, however, it may make things more difficult for Xi, who will be torn between preventing any real actions against Kim, but not wanting to be seen as protecting him,” he added.
The US official said policies over the past two decades had failed to stop North Korea from developing its nuclear and missile programme and that it was time for a new approach.
“The clock has now run out and all options are on the table,” the official said.
Evan Medeiros, managing director at Eurasia Group and a former top Asia adviser to Mr Obama, said: “Kim is once again crying out for attention and trying to put pressure on both Trump and Xi in advance of the big summit.”
Additional reporting by Robin Harding in Tokyo
Follow Demetri Sevastopulo on Twitter: @dimi
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