North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Friday morning that flew over Japanese airspace before crashing into the Pacific Ocean, South Korean and Japanese officials said.
The ballistic missile was launched at 6:57 a.m. Friday Seoul time (5:57 p.m. Thursday ET) from the Sunan area of Pyongyang in an eastern direction nearly around 2,300 miles, and passed over Japanese airspace, a South Korean military official said.
The launch comes weeks after North Korea in late August fired a missile that traveled over Japanese airspace.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in a televised address that the single missile launched Friday flew over Hokkaido. There are no reports of any objects falling in Japanese territory or any other damage, Suga said.
“We as a nation simply cannot accept these repeated provocative acts by North Korea and we have lodged our firm protest and while communicating the strong anger from the Japanese public. We expressed our condemnation using the strongest of terms,” Suga said.
He said the missile landed around 1,242 miles east of Cape Erimo.
U.S. Pacific Command said it believes the missile launched Friday was an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
North Korea has conducted several ballistic missile tests this year in defiance of U.N. resolutions, including two intercontinental ballistic missile tests that experts said suggest a missile could reach parts of the United States. North Korea earlier this month conducted its sixth nuclear test.
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