North Korea fires IRBM into Pacific

Passengers watch a news broadcast about North Korea's missile test on a television inside Seoul Station's main concourse on Tuesday morning.

North Korea fired a missile into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday morning, according to South Korean and Japanese authorities.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the South Korean military detected the launch of a single intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) in Chagang Province at 7:23 a.m., and that they were still analyzing the missile’s distance, speed and altitude.

Tuesday’s test is the North’s fifth test in 10 days.

The North launched one short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) on Sept. 25, then two last Wednesday, another two the following day and two on Saturday.

The test set off the Japanese nationwide emergency alert system — known as J-Alert — for the first time in five years.

The last time J-Alert was triggered was in August 2017, when Pyongyang launched a Hwasong-12 IRBM that traversed Japanese airspace.

Warnings were issued to residents of Aomori Prefecture and the island of Hokkaido to seek shelter as the missile flew over the northern Japanese archipelago before its descent into the Pacific Ocean.

The Tohoku-Hokkaido bullet train route was suspended between Shin-Aomori station and Morioka station out of precaution, but later resumed operations.

The ongoing spate of missile tests by Pyongyang came after Seoul and Washington wrapped up a joint naval exercise involving the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, as well as a trilateral anti-submarine exercise with Tokyo last week.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]