North Korea fired on the morning of this Friday (18), Thursday night in Brazil, what is considered an intercontinental ballistic missile, the country’s longest-range weapon. The artifact fell into the sea, in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, according to country officials.
The firing came less than 24 hours after another ballistic missile was fired on Thursday, in what Pyongyang called its “fiercer response” to US efforts to increase its military presence in the region. According to a statement from the North Korean regime, in a threatening tone, Washington is making a “gamble it will regret”.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned the launch and said the fire from Pyongyang was intolerable. “We protest strongly against North Korea, which repeats its provocations with unprecedented frequency,” said the politician in Thailand, where he is attending an APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum) meeting.
North Korea has already carried out more than 40 launches in 2022, amid a scenario in which atomic threats were renewed by Pyongyang in the most intense way since 2017. That year, a series of missile tests capable of reaching the US and explosion of a hydrogen bomb led the government of then President Donald Trump to negotiate directly with the North Korean dictator.
It didn’t work, not least because the American premise was to make the peninsula an area without nuclear weapons, and without them the communist regime loses its main instrument of negotiation. Now, the signaling appears to be the same, and Kim is expected to conduct a nuclear test at any moment.
Last month, the US responded to the firing of an intermediate-range missile that flew over Japan by sending an aircraft carrier to the region and bombing exercises with Japanese and South Koreans. Pyongyang retaliated with more ballistic missiles and fighter jet training.
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