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N. Korea fails 1st mid-range ballistic missile launch

April 15, 2016
This file photo taken on Oct. 10, 2015, shows the BM-25 missile on parade in Pyongyang.

This file photo taken on Oct. 10, 2015, shows the BM-25 missile on parade in Pyongyang.

SEOUL, April 15 (Yonhap) — North Korea conducted its first test-launch of the medium-range ballistic missile Musudan early Friday from its east coast, but the launch ended in failure, officials said.

“North Korea seems to have tried a missile launch from the East Sea area in the early morning today, but it is presumed to have failed,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Sources said the launched missile was the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), also known as the BM-25.

The missile lifted off at 5:30 a.m. but deviated from a “normal” trajectory, a JCS official told reporters.

After their joint assessment, South Korea and the United States concluded the launch as a failure, he added without elaborating further.

One military official said the IRBM disappeared from the South Korean side’s surveillance radar shortly after liftoff.

“It is highly likely that it may have exploded in the air. A further analysis is under way,” according to the official.

It was North Korea’s first test-launch of a Musudan missile, which the North is believed to have deployed against South Korea and other countries since 2007. The North has reportedly deployed some 30 Musudan missiles.

The South Korean military had previously detected North Korea deploying one or two Musudan missiles loaded onto a transporter erecter launcher, or TEL, near the east coastal city of Wonsan in the previous weeks for a potential launch.

With a range of 3,000-4,000 kilometers, the missile can fly over South Korea and Japan to reach as far as Guam, where the United States military forces are stationed.

North Korea is prohibited by a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions from launching ballistic missiles.

The latest launch is apparently part of North Korea’s celebration of the 104th birthday of the country’s founding father Kim Il-sung. The country has marked the national holiday in the past with elaborate military events.

South Korea’s military said it is bracing for further military provocations by North Korea as Pyongyang is moving toward more large-scale events down the road, including its ruling party’s 7th congress set for early May.

“We are preparing against the possibility that the North could carry out heavyweight provocations at any time, including a fifth nuclear test,” a military official said.

The latest defiant military action followed the UNSC’s adoption of a biting resolution on North Korea in early March in response to the communist country’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February.

North Korea appears to be sure to conduct another test-fire of the Musudan missile in the future to make up for the botched launch as the country is moving desperately to break free of the worsening international isolation it has been suffering since the duo provocations earlier this year.

Since the new resolution, North Korea protested with a test-firing of a series of short and missile and multiple rocket launchers, heightening military tension on the Korean Peninsula, a strategy which North Korea has often used to up its bargaining power in talks with South Korea and the U.S.

One Comment

  1. Younghyun Kim

    April 16, 2016 at 1:26 AM

    The barbaric and flagrant military regime’s ongoing provocative acts, such as nuclear and missile threats toward the Republic of Korea and International Society, are just like digging their already-doomed tombs, and it itself will bring forward the outrageous regime’s inevitable destructions. But above all, South Korea and the people must not reiterate their separation-plagued ideological divisions and their low-classified political chaotic situations at this confused condition.

    Sadly, South Korea’s a transition of power + a power change + a struggle for power change had been being nothing but an outward change and being beneath criticism or amount to very little, and also, weren’t beyond dealing with those all-related emergent matters due to the country’s political laggardliness + the people’s backwardness. So, those itself were meaningless and never worth it.

    However, this weak and uneducated worldling can’t understand the people who were always proud of themselves to go to polls under the cloak of its suffrage or the franchise. Therefore, the cruel and vicious and heinous military regime, North Korea, thinks that it is easy to underrate and paly the fool with the South, and also, take advantage of their free people. And those bad guys aren’t acquainted with it. So, the country’s enlightened people and its right politics are important or crucial to solve those all on the right direction. This weak and mere low-educated world worldling looks forward to seeing its better korea.

    2016. 04. 16. in Seoul-to-Suwon-toGangwondo From Younghyun Kim

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