A news program at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, broadcasts images of a North Korean missile launch on June 26, 2024. (Ahn Young-joon/AP)
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired an unspecified ballistic missile early Wednesday that is presumed to have failed, according to the South’s military.
The missile was fired from near Pyongyang around 5:30 a.m. and flew toward the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a message to reporters Wednesday.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in a press release Wednesday condemned the launch but said it “does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, or territory, or to our allies …”
A Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman told reporters on the customary condition of anonymity that the missile flew about 155 miles before exploding in mid-air, Yonhap News reported. The spokesman said the projectile may have been a hypersonic missile, according to Yonhap.
North Korea has fired over a dozen ballistic missiles in seven separate days of testing so far this year. It last fired 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan on May 30.
Hypersonic weapons travel at more than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5. North Korea claimed to have fired a solid-fueled intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a hypersonic warhead on Jan. 14.
The communist regime fired another solid-fueled intermediate-range ballistic missile on April 2; South Korea’s military said at the time that a hypersonic glide vehicle mounted on the missile was unsuccessful in its final gliding phase.
The latest launch comes four days after the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier sailed into Busan, South Korea’s largest port, to deter North Korea’s provocations. The warship will leave port Wednesday to participate in Freedom Edge, the first large-scale exercise between the United States, South Korea and Japan, according to a statement Tuesday from Seoul’s presidential office.
The launch was also conducted a week after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang. The two leaders signed a defense pledge on June 19 that allows their countries to provide military assistance to each other during “a state of war by an armed invasion,” according to North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.
South Korea’s government has long accused North Korea of supplying millions of artillery shells to Russia for its two-year war in Ukraine in exchange for food and military technology.
The U.S. State Department and foreign ministries from Seoul and Tokyo in a joint statement Monday condemned the military cooperation between Kim and Putin.
The two leaders’ pledge “should be of grave concern to anyone with an interest in maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, upholding the global non-proliferation regime, and supporting the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence against Russia’s brutal aggression,” the statement said.
