N. Korean missile test fails hours after UN meeting on nukes

By Associated Press, 30 April 2017




North Korea didn't immediately comment on the launch, though its state media on Saturday reiterated the country's goal of being able to strike the continental U.S.




Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, speaking after a meeting of Japan's National Security Council, said the missile is believed to have traveled about 50 kilometers (30 miles) and fallen on an inland part of North Korea.

Analysts say the KN-17 is a new Scud-type missile developed by North Korea. The North fired the same type of missile April 16, just a day after a massive military parade where it showed off its expanding missile arsenal, but U.S. officials called that launch a failure.

Some analysts say a missile the North test fired April 5, which U.S. officials identified as a Scud variant, also might have been a KN-17. U.S. officials said that missile spun out of control and crashed into the sea.

Moon Seong Mook, a South Korean analyst and former military official, says that the North would gain valuable knowledge even from failed launches as it continues to improve its technologies for missiles. The South Korean and Japanese assessments about Saturday's launch indicate that the North fired the missile from a higher-than-normal angle to prevent it from flying too far, he said.

"They could be testing a variety of things, such as the thrust of the rocket engine or the separation of stages," Moon said. "A failure is a failure, but that doesn't mean the launch was meaningless."

The two earlier launches were conducted from an eastern coastal area, but Saturday's missile was fired in the west, from an area near Pukchang, just north of the capital, Pyongyang.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry denounced the launch as an "obvious" violation of United Nations resolutions and the latest display of North Korea's "belligerence and recklessness."

"We sternly warn that the North Korean government will continue to face a variety of strong punitive measures issued by the U.N. Security Council and others if it continues to reject denuclearization and play with fire in front of the world," the ministry said.


Pope Francis warned that "a good part of humanity" will be destroyed if tensions with North Korea escalate, and he called for diplomacy and a revived United Nations to take the lead in negotiating a resolution.

Francis was asked as he traveled back to Rome from Egypt on Saturday local time (early Sunday morning Seoul time) about North Korean ballistic missile tests and U.S. warnings of "catastrophic" consequences if the world fails to stop them.

"Today, a wider war will destroy not a small part of humanity, but a good part of humanity and culture. Everything. Everything, no? It would be terrible. I don't think humanity today could bear it," he told reporters


Saturday's launch comes at a point of particularly high tension. Trump has sent a nuclear-powered submarine and the USS Carl Vinson aircraft supercarrier to Korean waters, and North Korea this week conducted large-scale, live-fire exercises on its eastern coast. The U.S. and South Korea also started installing a missile defense system that is supposed to be partially operational within days, while their two navies began joint military drills later Saturday.

The South Korean navy said the drills are aimed at "deterring North Korea's provocations and displaying the firm alliance between the United States and South Korea."

On Friday, the United States and China offered starkly different strategies for addressing North Korea's escalating nuclear threat as Tillerson demanded full enforcement of economic sanctions on Pyongyang and urged new penalties. Stepping back from suggestions of U.S. military action, he even offered aid to North Korea if it ends its nuclear weapons program.



His ideas included a ban on North Korean coal imports and preventing its overseas guest laborers, a critical source of government revenue, from sending money home. And he warned of unilateral U.S. moves against international firms conducting banned business with Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs, which could ensnare banks in China, the North's primary trade partner.




Wang put forward a familiar Chinese idea to ease tensions: North Korea suspending its nuclear and missile activities if the U.S. and South Korea stop military exercises in the region. Washington and Seoul reject the idea.



Tillerson said the North must take "concrete steps" to reduce its weapons threat before talks could occur. Six-nation nuclear negotiations with North Korea stalled in 2009. The Obama administration sought to resurrect them in 2012, but a deal to provide food aid in exchange for a nuclear freeze soon collapsed.

"In a nutshell, (North Korea) has already declared not to attend any type of talks which would discuss its nuclear abandonment, nuclear disbandment," Kim In Ryong, North Korea's deputy U.N. ambassador, told The Associated Press. His government declined to attend Friday's council meeting.

By Associated Press, 30 April 2017

Related Stories

Bg pattern light


Subscribe to Samoa Observer Online


Ready to signup?