A North Korean missile fired yesterday from its capital region exploded soon after liftoff in an apparent failed weapons launch, the South Korean military said.
Details of the missile explosion and the possibility of civilian damage were not immediately known.
The launch, the 10th of its kind this year, shows that North Korea is determined to press ahead on its push to modernize its weapons arsenal and pressure its rivals into making concessions amid dormant denuclearization talks.
Photo: AFP
The North Korean missile blew up while it was flying at an altitude of less than 20km, a South Korean military official said, requesting anonymity because he was not publicly authorized to speak to media on the issue.
The cause of the explosion was not known, he said.
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff earlier said that the launch was made from the Sunan area near Pyongyang at about 9:30am, but gave no other details.
Lee Choon-geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, said that the missile likely exploded less than a minute after its launch.
If the missile’s toxic fuels fell on civilian residential areas in North Korea, they would likely cause a major health impact, Lee said.
There was no immediate outside report of such damage in North Korea.
North Korea’s international airport is in Sunan.
South Korean media reported that the launch occurred at the airport, but the South Korean Ministry of Defense did not specify the exact launch site.
Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at Korea Aerospace University in Goyang, South Korea, said that the missile explosion likely sent debris as far as 100km to 200km away, rather than causing it to fall straight down from the mid-air blast site, due to its flying speed.
The missile likely flew about 10km before it exploded, Chang said.
The US Indo-Pacific Command later said that North Korea had fired a ballistic missile, but did not say whether it was a failed launch.
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