By Kang Ji-Hyun
President Moon Jae-in condemned North Korea's launch of a ballistic missile Friday, saying dialogue with Pyongyang was "impossible in a situation like this."
Moon also warned that South Korea has "power that can destroy the North beyond any recovery."
"North Korea ignored international rules and launched a missile that flew over the skies of another country. This behavior deserves criticism," Moon said while presiding over a National Security Council session at Cheong Wa Dae, a few hours after the North committed the missile provocation.
Moon said the North's repeated provocations will only lead to more pressure and sanctions from the international community, which will make it more difficult for the Kim Jong-un regime to come back to the negotiating table.
"The North should realize that its provocations will only cause its deepening diplomatic and economic isolation that will lead to its collapse," Moon said.
On Friday morning, the North launched what was presumed to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) over Japan for the second time in a less than a month, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
The missile flew about 3,700 kilometers and reached an altitude of 770 kilometers after being launched from the Sunan area in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang where the country's main airport is located, the JCS said.
"North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile at 6:57 a.m. that passed through the skies over northern Japan and landed in the North Pacific Ocean east of Japan," the JCS said.
The JCS noted its initial assessment indicated that the missile was an IRBM or a higher level one.
On Aug. 29, the Kim regime also fired an IRBM over Japan that traveled about 2,700 kilometers at a maximum altitude of 550 kilometers before landing in the Pacific waters.
This showed that the North increased the flight distance by 1,000 kilometers in a less than a month.
The North's IRBM is believed to have a range of about 4,500 kilometers, though the analysis of the range varies slightly among agencies and institutes.
A JCS official said, asking not to be named, that the ballistic trajectory in the latest launch was similar to one used in the Aug. 29 test, during which the North was believed to fire the missile at normal angle, not using a lofted, high-angle trajectory. Previously, the North fired its missiles at a high angle, claiming it was to exert no adverse effect on the security of neighboring countries.
In response, the Republic of Korea Army shot Hyunmoo-2 ballistic missiles from an eastern site near the inter-Korean border just six minutes after the North's missile provocation.
The JCS official said that the Army launched two missiles in a show of force, with one precisely hitting a simulated target in the East Sea about 250 kilometers away, the same distance between the training area and the North's Sunan district where the missile was fired.
The other, however, failed "in the initial stage," the official said, adding that military authorities are currently conducting analysis to find out the cause of the failure.
President Moon vowed to come up with firmer and more effective measures to change Pyongyang's behavior, ordering his security aides to finalize a revision of missile guidelines at the earliest possible date.
kbs1345@naver.com
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