N. Korea fires intermediate-range ballistic missile into East Sea
North Korea fired what appeared to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) into the East Sea on Tuesday, the South Korean military said, in its third ballistic missile launch of the year, Yonhap reported.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a message to reporters that it detected a missile presumed to be intermediate-range class fired from the Pyongyang region at 6:53 a.m. and the missile flew about 600 kilometers before landing in the East Sea.
Military officials suspect the North may have test-fired an intermediate-range missile equipped with a hypersonic warhead to test the performance of its delivery system following an engine test last month.
On March 20, Pyongyang said it successfully conducted a ground jet test of a solid-fuel engine for a new type of intermediate hypersonic missile.
"North Korea appears to have put a hypersonic warhead on top of the delivery system used in the engine test last month," a senior military official said on the background.
Although the North Korean missile flew for less than 10 minutes, shorter than the flight time of past IRBM launches, its speed was similar to that of a hypersonic missile, the official said.
"(We) assess the (latest launch) is connected to the solid-fuel ground test that North Korea made public in March," Col. Lee Sung-jun, spokesperson for the JCS, said in a regular briefing.
Hypersonic missiles travel at a speed of at least Mach 5 -- five times the speed of sound -- and are designed to be maneuverable on unpredictable flight paths and fly at low altitudes. At Mach 5 or higher, such a missile can travel the 195 kilometers between Pyongyang and Seoul in just one to two minutes.
Tuesday's launch marks North Korea's third ballistic missile launch this year.