Kim Jong-un has boasted of North Korea’s “sure capability” to strike US targets in the Pacific after his military carried out an apparently successful test of its Musudan medium-range missile.
The North Korean leader, who personally monitored Wednesday’s missile tests, described the launch as a “great event” that vastly improved the North’s pre-emptive nuclear attack capability, according to the official KCNA news agency.
“We have the sure capability to attack in an overall and practical way the Americans in the Pacific operation theatre,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.
Five previous Musudan tests ended in failure. But the second of two Musudans fired on Wednesday flew 250 miles (400km) – equivalent to half the distance to Japan’s main island of Honshu – before coming down in the Sea of Japan.
Tokyo expressed heightened concern about the military threat as the missile flew the longest distance to date for a Musudan. “The threat to Japan is intensifying,” said Gen Nakatani, Japan’s defence minister.
As the UN security council met to discuss its response, the American defence secretary, Ashton Carter, said the tests underlined the need for Washington and its allies to quickly deploy missile defence systems in the region.
“I don’t know whether it was successful. I don’t know what the test objectives were as seen by the North Koreans,” Carter told reporters in Kentucky.
“But for whatever reason, and with whatever level of success, this shows the need for us to continue to do what we’re doing, which is build these missile defences of various ranges to protect both our South Korean allies, US forces on the Korean Peninsula, Japan, and US territory.”