North Korea fired a missile Friday that flew over Japan’s Hokkaido and into the Pacific Ocean, according to South Korean and Japanese officials, Reuters reported.
The North launched the missile from its capital Pyongyang, according to the Associated Press. The launch followed its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3. Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, the top commander of U.S. nuclear forces said Thursday he assumed the September 3 nuclear test was a hydrogen bomb.
Friday’s missile flew over Japan just after 7 a.m. local time, landing in the Pacific approximately 2,000 km east of Hokkaido, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters at a press conference, according to Reuters.
Seoul’s ministry of defense said South Korea’s military responded by conducting a live-fire ballistic missile drill.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told a group of reports Friday’s missile test “put millions of Japanese in the duck-and-cover,” Associated Press reported. Asked whether America planned a military response, Mattis said, “I don’t want to talk on that yet.”
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a statement said: “These continued provocations only deepen North Korea’s diplomatic and economic isolation.”
Tillerson was en route to the U.S. from London, where he met with British and French officials to discuss how to increase pressure on Pyongyang.
“United Nations Security Council resolutions, including the most recent unanimous sanctions resolution, represent the floor, not the ceiling, of the actions we should take,” Tillerson said. He called on China and Russia to “indicate their intolerance for these reckless missile launches by taking direct actions of their own.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has called a National Security Council meeting to discuss the launch.