North Korea fires another missile as South salvages parts of Soviet-era weapon - Reuters

SEOUL, Nov 9 (Reuters) - North Korea fired astatine slightest 1 ballistic rocket into the oversea connected Wednesday, arsenic South Korea said it had identified debris from an earlier motorboat arsenic portion of a Soviet-era SA-5 surface-to-air missile.

Japan's Coast Guard said the ballistic rocket appeared to person fallen into the oversea minutes aft the motorboat was reported.

The rocket flew to an altitude of up to 50 km, and covered a scope of 250 km, Japan's Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters.

He said the authorities lodged a beardown protestation with North Korea via diplomatic channels done Beijing, and that Tokyo had powerfully condemned the launch.

Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) besides said it had detected the launch of an unspecified ballistic rocket from North Korea.

The motorboat came aft South Korea concluded an investigation of what it had initially said was part of a North Korean short-range ballistic rocket (SRBM) that landed adjacent South Korean waters past week.

The analysis, however, showed the piece, astir 3 metres (3.3 yards) agelong and 2 metres wide, was portion of an SA-5 anti-aircraft missile, the defence ministry said, citing its quality and features.

The ministry powerfully condemned the rocket motorboat astatine the time, calling it a breach of a 2018 inter-Korean subject pact banning immoderate activities stoking borderline tensions.

"This SA-5 rocket motorboat was a intelligibly deliberate, intentional provocation," it said successful a statement. "The SA-5 besides has characteristics of a surface-to-surface missile, and Russia has utilized akin missiles successful Ukraine for surface-to-surface attacks."

A South Korean Navy vessel utilized an underwater probe to retrieve the missile, which came arsenic the North test-fired aggregate missiles past week, including a imaginable failed intercontinental ballistic rocket (ICBM), protesting against associated aerial drills by South Korea and the United States.

It was the archetypal clip a North Korean ballistic rocket had landed adjacent South Korean waters.

North Korea's subject said the launches were simulated strikes connected South Korea and the United States, criticising their exercises arsenic an "dangerous, assertive warfare drill."

South Korean and U.S. officials person besides said that Pyongyang has made method preparations to trial a atomic device, the archetypal clip it volition person done truthful since 2017.

The SA-5 is an aerial defence rocket primitively designed by the Soviet Union, wherever it was designated the S-200, to sprout down strategical bombers and different high-altitude targets.

The rocket was exported astir the world, and is inactive successful work successful astatine slightest a twelve countries, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Missile Defense Project.

North Korea took transportation of SA-5 systems successful the mid-1980s, according to "The Armed Forces of North Korea: On the Path of Songun", a 2020 survey by Dutch researchers.

"Two sites equipped with these precise long-ranged systems screen the entirety of North Korean airspace arsenic good arsenic a sizeable chunk of that of the South," the researchers wrote.

"However, having been designed to antagonistic strategical aircraft, their usage against modern accelerated jets specified arsenic the F-15 and F-16 is questionable to accidental the least."

Reporting by Hyonhee Shinn and Josh Smith; Additional reporting by Kantaro Komiya and Daniel Leussink successful Tokyo; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Gerry Doyle

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