North Korea returned to its well-worn playbook Wednesday after a nearly monthlong lull in missile testing, firing off what Japan said was an apparent intercontinental ballistic missile-class weapon in a dramatic show of force as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was set to meet South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol on the sidelines of a NATO summit.
Japan's Defense Ministry said the missile had been fired from North Korea's interior at around 9:59 a.m., flying about 1,000 kilometers for 74 minutes before splashing down about 250 km west of Hokkaido's Okushiri Island — outside Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which extends 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its coast.
The 74-minute flight time was the longest yet for a North Korean missile, the ministry said, with the weapon believed to have been fired on a "lofted trajectory" that saw it hit a maximum altitude of about 6,000 km — far higher than the 400-km average orbiting altitude of the international space station.