North Korea Rattles Tokyo’s Cage With New Missile Test

At 6:59am Friday (5:59pm Thursday, EDT) North Korea launched an intermediate range ballistic missile. The missile passed over the northernmost Japanese Home Island of Hokkaido, continued downrange, and splashed in the Western Pacific.

This is the flight path

Based on initial information, this is the estimated splash down point for the #DPRK missile pic.twitter.com/nsOWacuH9H

— Strategic Sentinel (@StratSentinel) September 14, 2017

Just a couple of weeks ago, on August 28, the North Koreans fired another missile on a very similar trajectory.

Based on update info from #NHK– #NK #DPRK #NorthKorea missile overflew #Japan at Cape Erimo before landing 1180km away in sea. #Trump #USA pic.twitter.com/tvSfutlm7R

— Billy Burton (@billyb2009) August 28, 2017

The missile was launched from Pyongyang international airport, the same launch location as the last time.

The missile is speculated to be the intermediate range ballistic missile called the Hwasong-12. It is also speculated that this is the first operational test of that missile and it will probably move into production in the near future.

Total time of flight was 17 minutes. It took approximately six minutes to reach Japanese airspace.

Total distance traveled was about 3,700 km. Max height was about 770 km.

This is what it was like on Hokkaido when the launch was detected:

American living in Hokkaido describes the situation after #NorthKorea launches missile over #Japan‘s airspace – ABCpic.twitter.com/GHZYnRIOxE

— News (@TheDarkBulletin) September 14, 2017

This is the sixth North Korean missile, and the second ballistic missile, to have been fired over Japanese territory. The other four missiles were satellite launch vehicles.

The test should probably be seen in light of the enhance UN sanctions imposed on North Korea on Monday. But it is part of a concerted campaign to make unsteady allies even more uneasy by demonstrating to them the downside of military cooperation with the United States. A little earlier today it seemed as though the already shaky Moon government in South Korea was looking over its shoulder for the exit. The dynamic with Japan, though, is playing out quite differently. Japan is not taking being threatened by its former colony all that well.

Get used to this. North Korea seems to be using the Pacific Ocean east of Japan as its test range. It learns a bit more on each of these shots and it gets a chance to mess with Tokyo. In short, it is just too much to resist.

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