Seoul, March 06 (QNA) – South Korea and Japan strongly condemned on Monday the test-launches of ballistic missiles by North Korea as it violates the UN Security Council resolutions and threatens regional peace and security.
North Korea fired four ballistic missiles of a new type into east waters early on Monday. The missiles flew eastward some 1,000 km on average, and three out of the four fell into Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn denounced the missiles launches as a grave provocation and a direct challenge to the international community as it defied repeated warnings from the international society against ballistic missile launches, South Korea’s news agency (Yonhap) reported.
Seoul’s foreign ministry said in a statement that North Korea’s ballistic missile launches blatantly and clearly violates the UN Security Council resolutions while threatening peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the entire international community.
The statement said Pyongyang should realize the fact that repeated provocations and “fanatic” adherence to nuclear and missile developments will speed up the country’s isolation and self-destruction.
In Japan, Prime Minister Sinzo Abe confirmed the missile launches during an Upper House Committee session on Monday, saying “the launches clearly show that North Korea has reached a new dimension of threat and the repeated launches are serious provocation to our security”. Japan has also filed an official protest against North Korea over the latest missile launches, the Japanese leader said.
While saying there were no immediate reports of damage to ships, vessels, or aircraft flying in the vicinity of the missiles’ flight path, Japan’s top government spokesperson, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, told a news conference in Tokyo that the North launch was a “grave threat to national security”, and Japan would be fully on alert for any future contingencies.
Senior security officials of South Korea and the United States also had phone talks over the missile launches. Kim Kwan-jin, top security advisor to impeached South Korean President Park Geun-hye, talked with US national security advisor Herbert McMaster of the White House via phone for 15 minutes, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said in a statement.
During the talks, Kim and McMaster strongly denounced the missile launches, agreeing to strengthen cooperation to put effective sanctions and pressure towards North Korea. South Korea’s chief negotiator of the six-party talks also held emergency phone talks with his US and Japanese counterparts following the missile test-launches, Seoul’s foreign ministry said. (QNA)
