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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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North Korea launched a long-range missile capable of reaching the U.S. on Monday, Japanese and South Korean officials said, as Pyongyang warned of a "touch-and-go situation" on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on Monday, which could have a potential range of more than 15,000 kilometers, said Japanese minister Shingo Miyake. "The whole of the U.S. territory would be within the range," he added, according to AFP.
The White House, also describing the launch as an ICBM test, said it was a "flagrant violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions."
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Just hours earlier, North Korea had fired a short-range ballistic missile. North Korea's dogged missile testing has set its neighbors South Korea and Japan on edge, turning to the U.S. for reassurance—a move that has angered Pyongyang.
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If North Korea moves against South Korean territory or its people, it will spark an "immediate, overwhelming response," South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Monday.
"North Korea's military activities pose an even more grave and imminent threat to Japan's national security than ever before," Tokyo's Defense Ministry added on Monday. North Korea is launching missiles with "unprecedented high frequency, escalating provocation," Japan said.
The launch comes shortly after the U.S. said it would use "the full range of U.S. capabilities including nuclear" to support South Korea after the second meeting of the U.S.-South Korean Nuclear Consultative Group in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
"Any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies is unacceptable and will result in the end of the Kim regime," Washington and Seoul said in a joint-statement on Saturday, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea has launched several ICBMs this year, and earlier this month, Kim Tae-hyo, a South Korean presidential official, said there was a "possibility of North Korea launching an ICBM this December," South Korean media reported.
In mid-July, Pyongyang said it had test-fired a Hwasong-18 solid-fuel ICBM; solid-fuel missiles can be readied and fired quicker than liquid-fuel missiles.
A spokesperson for North Korea's Defense Ministry said in a combative statement on Sunday that Washington and Seoul "are going to finish the end of the year with a preview of a nuclear war."
Referring to the meeting between South Korea and the U.S. last week, the spokesperson said it was an "open declaration on nuclear confrontation to make the use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK," according to a translation provided by KCNA.
On Sunday, a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Missouri, arrived at the South Korean port of Busan, Seoul's Yonhap news agency reported.
"Clear is the intention of the U.S. which dispatched the nuclear-powered submarine Missouri to the Korean peninsula as soon as it hatched a dangerous plot for a nuclear war in Washington," North Korea's defense ministry said. This "critical situation" was pushing Pyongyang towards "more offensive" actions, it added.
"A touch-and-go situation is prevailing on the Korean peninsula," the state-run North Korean news agency, KCNA, said on Monday.
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