North Korea’s Latest Missile Launch Proves Their Capability To Target Guam

Here are the details about North Korea’s latest missile launch over Japan:

North Korea has fired a ballistic missile over Japan, in the face of fresh sanctions against the isolated nation, according to the Japanese and South Korean governments. The missile was launched from the capital Pyongyang on Thursday just days after the U.S. announced additional sanctions against North Korea for carrying out a successful test of a hydrogen bomb capable of being fitted to an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Prior to that nuclear test, North Korea last month launched a missile over Japan in an act condemned by the United Nations at the time as “not just a threat to the region but all U.N. member states,” The New York Times reported.

According to a statement from the South Korean military Thursday, the missile is thought to have reached an altitude of 770km (478 miles) and travelled around 3,700km, with the Japanese government reporting the missile landed 1,240 miles east of Hokkaido. The chief cabinet secretary to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Yoshihide Suga, told The New York Times the country “absolutely cannot accept the repeated outrageous provocative actions by North Korea.”  [Newsweek]

You can read more at the link, but what is significant about this launch is that the North Koreans have confirmed that they can range Guam:

The intermediate-range missile fired from Pyongyang at 6:57 a.m. on Friday flew over the northern island of Hokkaido, reaching an altitude of 770 kilometers (478 miles) before landing in the Pacific Ocean. It traveled 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) — further than the 3,400 kilometers (2,100 miles) from Pyongyang to Guam, which North Korea has repeatedly threatened.
“The range of this test was significant since North Korea demonstrated that it could reach Guam with this missile, although the payload the missile was carrying is not known,” David Wright, a co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a blog post. [Bloomberg]

You can read more at the link.