Story highlights
North Korea launched two missiles off its eastern coast, says South Korea
Pyongyang has at least four previous attempts to launch Musudan missile this year
North Korea fired two missiles Wednesday morning from its eastern coast, according to South Korean and U.S. officials.
Both are believed to be Musudan intermediate-range missiles, fired from the North Korean port city of Wonsan, said Cmdr. Dave Benham, spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command.
“According to the U.N. Security Council resolution, any launches that involve ballistic missile technology are a violation of the treaty and we think this is clearly a provocation towards us,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee said at a regularly-scheduled press briefing.
The first missile flew 93 miles (150 kilometers), and is considered a failed launch, according to a South Korean military official.
The second missile traveled 249 miles (400 kilometers) and the data is still being analyzed by the South Korean military, the official told CNN.
READ: Everything you need to know about North Korea
North Korea has made at least four previous attempts this year to test this type of missile.
Both missiles were tracked over the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, “where initial indications are they fell,” Benham said. Benham said the missile launches did not pose a threat to North America.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that his country could “never forgive” the test, which he stressed was in violation of U.N. resolutions.
“We can never forgive this and lodged a firm protest,” he told reporters from Kumamoto, southern Japan.
“We would like to continue taking a close coordination with the U.S. and South Korea and working on North Korea (at) the United Nations, so that North Korea would not conduct such an action again.”
Japan’s Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters that the first missile launch did not affect the country’s security, but he also called for immediate meetings to take all possible measures to protect Japan. He made the comments before the second missile launch.
The first missile launch occurred at 5:58 a.m. local time and the South Korean military presumed that one had been a failure, according to a spokesperson from the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
About two hours later, North Korea fired the second missile at 8:05 a.m. local time, according to the spokesperson. He said further analysis is being conducted.
The U.S. State Department condemned the recent missile tests in a statement: “We are aware of reports that the DPRK fired two ballistic missiles. We are monitoring and continuing to assess the situation in close coordination with our regional allies and partners.”
The United States advised North Korea to stop its ballistic missile tests and said it only strengthened the international community’s resolve to press forward with U.N. sanctions. The United States said it would also defend its allies, South Korea and Japan, and called its commitment to them “ironclad.”
“We remain prepared to defend ourselves and our allies from any attack or provocation,” according to U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby.
North Korea tests Musudan again
This year, North Korea has taken much interest in the Musudan, an intermediate-range missile with a strike range of 2,500 to 4,000 kilometers (1,553 to 2485 miles).
“(Kim Jong Un) is interested in being the leader of NK who has been able to create a deliverable nuclear weapon and clearly they’re counting on this intermediate range Musudan missile to do that,” Christopher Hill, the former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, told CNN.
“The key element of it is that it’s mobile. The fixed launch points, we know precisely where they are, but if this thing pops out a forest we don’t.”
North Korea attempted its fourth Musudan test in May, but it exploded after flying for about two to three seconds, according to U.S. defense officials.
READ: North Korea missile launch attempt apparently failed, South Korea says
In late April, a twin missile test of Musudan missiles also failed. In mid-April, on the anniversary of North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung’s birthday, another reported Musudan missile launch ended in failure. All launches were from the North Korean port city of Wonsan.
While the missiles did not reach their full range, at least the second test might count as a partial success, John Schilling, an aerospace engineer who regularly contributes to 38 North, a North Korean monitoring project, told CNN.
“The missile didn’t reach nearly its full range, but it didn’t blow up on the pad and it flew far enough that patient engineers might have learned something from it.
“But as they didn’t stop to figure out what went wrong after today’s first test, it is pretty clear that they aren’t working patiently and trying to learn from their mistakes.”
The Musudan missile isn’t really new, according to Schilling.
“It showed up in North Korea over a decade ago, and it seems to be based on a 1960s-era Soviet design with some local modifications.” The Musudan with its intermediate-range capabilities could deliver a nuclear warhead as far as the U.S. base in Guam, he wrote in an opinion piece for CNN.
The last several months have been particularly contentious on the Korean peninsula, after North Korea claimed to have tested its first hydrogen bomb, an assertion that U.S. officials dispute, and fired a satellite into orbit.
Why so many missile tests?
North Korea could be testing missiles with such intensity this year due to more financial challenges, said Stephan Haggard, director of the Korea-Pacific program at the University of California San Diego.
Pyongyang has been hit with new U.N. sanctions, a crackdown to block North Korea from the international financial system and the closure of the joint North-South Korea Kaesong complex this year.
“North Korea is on the verge of feeling quite substantial economic distress,” Haggard said. “Part of the effort here is to get attention focused back on North Korea, so that perhaps they think they can get some relief from the sanctions instituted recently.”
North Korea wants to develop its missiles, because it’s a way of delivering nuclear weapons, he said.
“You can develop a nuclear device, but unless you can deliver it, it has no strategic value,” he said. Without an air force or a technically capable submarine, the missiles are the only route.
Haggard says nuclear weapons give North Korea’s Kim Jong Un leverage to bargain with the rest of the world.
“The farther along they are, the higher bribe price the external community has to pay for them to give it up,” he said.
Kim has been in a rush to sharpen North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities, more so than his father.
In an interview with CNN’s Paula Hancocks earlier this month, South Korean Defense Minister Han Minkoo pointed out that during the 18 years of Kim Jong Il’s reign in North Korea, the country had conducted 18 missile tests.
In just four years of reign under his son, the younger Kim has now overseen 27 missile launches with the two most recent tests on Wednesday.
CNN’s Jamie Crawford, Yoko Wakatsuki, and Elise Labott contributed to this report.