North Korea tests long-range ICBM

The intercontinental ballistic missile fired Thursday may be North Korea’s biggest yet. The missile flew farther and longer — roughly 670 miles at an altitude above 3,850 miles — than previous ones, suggesting a new type of ICBM, Japan’s deputy defense minister said. A professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies said the missile, in theory, could put the entire United States in striking range. This breaks North Korea Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s self-imposed moratorium on ICBM testing that he set in 2017 before opening talks with the Trump administration. On Friday North Korea’s official media confirmed the ICBM launch, saying Kim had ordered it as part of the country’s “nuclear war deterrent” and in preparation for a “long-standing confrontation” with the United States.

What has been the international response? South Korea fired its own missiles in show-of-strength drills from land, sea, and air, and said it is ready to use precision strikes against North Korea’s missile launch points. Japanese officials condemned the launch as reckless. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called it a “brazen violation” of UN Security Council resolutions.

Dig deeper: Listen to Joshua Schumacher report on Japan’s response to threats from China and North Korea on The World and Everything in It podcast.

—WORLD has updated this report.