North Korea fires suspected long-range ICBM towards sea, South Korea says
Al Jazeera
North Korea is believed to have test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile towards the sea, South Korea reports.
North Korea launched a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) towards waters off its eastern coast, South Korea’s military said, in what is believed to be the longest flight-time yet for a North Korean missile.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement that the missile launch towards the East Sea, which is also known as the Sea of Japan, was detected at about 7:10am local time (22:10 GMT).
“North Korea’s ballistic missile appears to be an ICBM fired on a lofted trajectory,” the JCS said in a text message, the country’s Yonhap news agency reports.
North Korea’s launch of longer-range missiles in “lofted trajectory” means firing the missile almost vertically. This allows a missile to travel to a very high altitude but then land a short horizontal distance from the launch site.
Such launches are said to enable Pyongyang to gather data sent back from missile tests to better understand the challenges faced when a long-range warhead re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
