Jung Yeon-Je, AFP | Replicas of North Korean Scud-B missile and South Korean Hawk surface-to-air missiles are displayed at the Korean War Memorial in Seoul on July 8, 2016.

North Korea fired a ballistic missile from a submarine on Saturday but it appears to have failed soon after launch, South Korea’s military said.

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The launch comes at the end of a week of sharply rising tensions on the peninsula. It is only a day after the U.S. and South Korea pledged to deploy an advanced anti-missile system to counter threats from Pyongyang, and two days after North Korea warned it was planning its toughest response to what it deemed a “declaration of war” by the United States.

That followed Washington’s blacklisting of the isolated state’s leader Kim Jong Un for alleged human rights abuses.

The South’s Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile was launched at about 11:30 a.m. Seoul time (0230 GMT) in waters east of the Korean peninsula.

The missile was likely fired from a submarine as planned but appears to have failed in the early stage of flight, the Joint Chiefs said.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the missile’s engine successfully ignited but the projectile soon exploded in mid-air at a height of about 10 km (6 miles), and covered not more than a few kilometers across the water.

The South’s military declined to confirm those details.

The missile was detected in the sea southeast of the North Korean city of Sinpo, South Korea’s military said. Satellite images indicate Pyongyang is actively trying to develop its submarine-launched ballistic missile programme in this area, according to experts.

Abe condemns

Neighbouring Japan, the United States, and South Korea’s military condemned the missile launch as a flagrant violation of U.N. sanctions.

The missile launch is a “clear challenge to U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Saturday, according to Kyodo news agency.

“We should strongly condemn the launch by working with the international community,” Abe told reporters.

Abe said the launch did not gravely affect Japan’s national security.

The U.S. said it was monitoring and assessing the situation in close coordination with its regional allies and partners.

“We strongly condemn North Korea’s missile test in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions, which explicitly prohibit North Korea’s use of ballistic missile technology,” said Gabrielle Price, spokeswoman for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

“These actions, and North Korea’s continued pursuit of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons capabilities, pose a significant threat to the United States, our allies, and to the stability of the greater Asia-Pacific,” she added.

The North has conducted a string of military tests that began in January with its fourth nuclear test and included the launch of a long-range rocket the following month.

The U.N. Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on the country in March for its nuclear test and rocket launch.

North Korea rejects the sanctions as infringement of its sovereignty and its right to space exploration.

South Korea and the United States said on Friday they would deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system with the U.S. military in South Korea to counter the threat from nuclear-armed North Korea, drawing a sharp and swift protest from neighbouring China, Pyongyang’s sole major ally.

Pyongyang also conducted a test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) in April, calling it a “great success” that provided “one more means for powerful nuclear attack”.

A report on 38 North, a website run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S., said in May that North Korea’s submarine-launched ballistic missile program is making progress, but it appeared that the first ballistic missile submarine and operational missiles are unlikely to become operational before 2020.

(REUTERS)

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