North Korea’s ballistic missile launch sparks brief evacuation orders in Japan

North Korea on Thursday fired a ballistic missile that landed in the waters between Japan and the Korean Peninsula.

The launch led to Tokyo issuing an order asking people living on an island to take shelter as a precautionary measure. That order has been withdrawn now.

The missile was launched from near the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and flew toward the waters between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staffs said. The missile was believed to be a medium or a longer-range, but it was not clear how far it flew, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

Following Thursday’s launch, the Japanese government issued an alert urging residents to take shelter on the northernmost island of Hokkaido. Later, the government retracted its order saying there was no chance of the missile landing near the island as per its analysis.

Japan said the missile landed in the water but did not specify where it exactly landed.

In October last year, the Japanese government issued a similar evacuation advisory after a North Korean intermediate-range missile flew over the country. That launch was done to demonstrate the potential of the missile to reach Guam, a US Pacific territory. While no reports of damage were reported when the missile landed in the Pacific, Japan urged people living in the northeastern regions to take shelter and stopped train services.

Thursday’s launch by North Korea is the latest in a series of weapons tests by the secretive country this year. This came after its leader Kim Jong-un said the nuclear arsenal would be enhanced in “practical and offensive” ways, according to AP.

North Korea has launched about 30 missiles this year in response to the military drills being conducted by South Korea and the United States, which Pyongyang views as a recipe for invasion. Both Seoul and Washington have denied Pyongyang’s claims and said the drills were defensive in nature and were held to respond to the growing nuclear threat from North Korea.

The North Korean government has contended for a long time that the US-led military drills are in response to Washington’s hostility against Pyongyang. North Korea said it was forced to develop nuclear weapons as the United States did not lift its sanctions in exchange for stopping its missile tests.

Foreign experts have raised concerns that North Korea could carry out its first major nuclear test in over five years since a new type of warhead was made public earlier this month, the AP report said.

For about a week, North Korea has not been responding to calls from South Korea on its cross-border inter-Korean hotlines. This has caused concerns for Seoul as communication on those channels is required to prevent accidental clashes between the two Koreas at their disputed western sea boundary.

South Korea’s Unification Minister Kwon Youngse “strongly regretted” North Korea’s “unilateral and irresponsible attitude” for not responding on the hotlines. The minister also threatened unspecified legal action over Pyongyang’s use of South Korean assets at a now-stalled inter-Korean factory in North Korea.

In 2016, South Korean companies pulled out of Kaesong in North Korea after the latter’s nuclear test. Recently, the North’s state media showed what appeared to be South Korean commuter buses operational in the streets of Kaesong and Pyongyang, the AP report said.

Later this month, a summit will be held between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and his US counterpart Joe Biden and North Korea’s missile testing spree and nuclear arsenal is expected to be a major topic during the meeting. The South Korean government under Yoon is looking for Washington’s assurances that it would utilise its military capabilities to tackle in case North Korea launches a nuclear attack on the South.

World leaders will also gather and meet in Japan for next month’s G7 meetings where diplomatic pressure on North Korea would continue to be maintained, according to experts. At the UN Security Council, China and Russia, which are permanent members, have blocked stricter sanctions on North Korea in the last few months.