N Korea’s missile flew over Japan
North Korea shoots missile over Japan in ‘barbaric’ act; S Korea and the United States responded a live-fire drill with ballistic missile malfunctioned and crashed into the ground, panicking confused residents of a coastal city of Gangneung, where some feared it was a North Korean attack, already uneasy earlier over increasingly provocative weapons tests by rival North Korea.
Japanese authorities urged residents in the northern Hokkaido and Aomori regions to take cover. The missile is believed to have landed in the Pacific Ocean, with Tokyo and Seoul strongly condemning the launch.
DW ~ October 4, 2022 // Yahoo News ~ October 5, 2022
North Korea launched a suspected medium-range ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday, authorities in Tokyo and Seoul said.
Although the launch was likely just a test, officials in the Japanese regions of Hokkaido and Aomori urged residents to take cover early on Tuesday morning.
“North Korea appears to have launched a missile,” the Japanese government said in a rare activation of its J-Alert system. “Please evacuate into buildings or underground.”
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol condemned Pyongyang’s “reckless provocations” while Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called the missile launch “barbaric.” No damage or injuries were reported.
Later on Tuesday, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said Pyongyang was unresponsive on the inter-Korea hotline used for negotiations between the two countries.
Missile launch ‘threatened security of Japan’
The missile flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean some 3,000 kilometers (1900 miles) away from the archipelago, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said (Coming close to Guam, which is 3425 kilometers away).
Japanese and South Korean authorities said the missile traveled around 4,500 kilometers in total, and reached a speed of Mach 17.
“North Korea’s series of actions, including its repeated ballistic missile launches, threatens the peace and security of Japan, the region, and the international community, and poses a serious challenge to the entire international community, including Japan,” Matsuno added.
In August, the United States and South Korea kicked off large-scale joint military drills. North Korea views these exercises as an invasion rehearsal, however Seoul and Washington maintain they are defensive in nature.
Ankit Panda, an Asia-Pacific security expert with the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that firing over Japan allows North Korean scientists to test missiles under more realistic conditions.
“Compared to the usual highly lofted trajectory, this allows them to expose a long-range reentry vehicle to thermal loads and atmospheric reentry stresses that are more representative of the conditions they’d endure in real-world use,” he said.
“Politically, it’s complicated: the missile largely flies outside of the atmosphere when it’s over Japan, but it’s obviously distressing to the Japanese public to receive warnings of a possible incoming North Korean missile.”
“Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke; among the tribes of Israel have I made known that which shall surely be” Hosea 5:9
“And I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brethren, even the whole seed of Ephraim” Jeremiah 7:15
Joel Huan
The Mystery of Ephraim 