Japan on alert after North Korea’s ballistic missile launch
The Japanese government has asked residents of the northern island of Hokkaido to take shelter after North Korea fired a ballistic missile.
North Korea has ramped up its weapons tests in recent months, raising tensions. (illustrative picture)
AFP
North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Thursday, prompting an alert on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, whose residents were asked to take shelter.
“Get out immediately. Evacuate immediately,” the Japanese government ordered in a message, asking residents of Hokkaido to shelter in buildings or underground, and noting that the missile would land around 8:00 a.m. local time (01:00 a.m. Swiss time).
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing Seoul’s military, earlier reported that North Korea had fired an undetermined ballistic missile toward the Sea of Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s office also tweeted that “North Korea has launched what appears to be a ballistic missile.”
“Radioactive Tsunami”
North Korea has stepped up weapons tests in recent months, increasing tensions with Seoul and Washington, which in turn have strengthened their military cooperation and carried out major joint maneuvers in the region.
On Monday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for increasing his country’s deterrence capabilities to counter “escalating maneuvers by US imperialists and treacherous South Korean puppets to unleash a war of aggression,” the official KCNA news agency reported. Since March 23, Pyongyang has said it has conducted three tests of an underwater nuclear attack drone capable of “creating a large-scale radioactive tsunami.”
The regime also claimed to have launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on March 16. Last year, North Korea declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear power, effectively burying any talks on the country’s denuclearization.
AFP
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