South Korea

North Korea Fires Second Missile Over Japan in a Month

9/14/17
from The Wall Street Journal,
9/14/17:

Missile fired early Friday passed over Hokkaido; no damage or injuries immediately reported.

North Korea fired a missile over Japan early Friday local time for the second time in a month, defying rising international efforts to force it to abandon course. In a rare move, South Korea responded to the launch by immediately conducting a simulated strike of the North Korean launch site, an air base near Pyongyang. In Japan, alerts were sent to smartphones of people living in areas where the missile was projected to pass over soon after the launch was detected. No damage or injuries were reported. The latest missile launch marked Pyongyang’s latest provocation after the United Nations Security Council on Monday unanimously adopted new sanctions against the country.

The Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Friday at the request of the U.S. and Japan. A new violation by the North, in response to the adoption of the fresh sanctions, was anticipated, some diplomats said, raising the stakes for finding a diplomatic solution. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for the new sanctions to be fully enforced. “We need to make North Korea understand that there is no bright future for them if they pursue this course further,” he said. The latest missile passed over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido and landed in the Pacific Ocean shortly after 7 a.m. Japan time, a similar path to another missile launched on Aug. 29. It traveled around 2,300 miles, according to South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff, further than the roughly 1,700 miles traveled by the previous missile, highlighting the country’s progress in developing nuclear weapons that can threaten the U.S.

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