DPRK gears up for nuke talks with missile test

Launch seen as means of extracting gains from US before revived diplomacy

SEOUL - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile into the sea on Wednesday, the Republic of Korea's military said, in a display of its military capabilities hours after saying it would resume nuclear diplomacy with the United States this weekend.

ROK officials said the missile was fired from the DPRK's eastern waters, suggesting it may have been submarine-launched. But ROK defense officials won't officially disclose whether the missile was fired from a submarine, a barge or any other possible platform.

According to Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff, the missile flew about 450 kilometers at the maximum altitude of 910 km before landing between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. The intelligence authorities of Seoul and Washington were precisely analyzing its further details, it said.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga earlier said that Pyongyang fired two ballistic missiles from the country's east coast, and one of them appeared to have landed inside Japan's exclusive economic zone. There were no reports of damage to Japanese vessels or aircraft, he said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe condemned the launches and said they violate United Nations resolutions against the DPRK.

"We will continue to cooperate with the US and the international community and do the utmost to maintain and protect the safety of the people as we stay on alert," Abe said.

The launches, which were Pyongyang's ninth round of weapons tests since late July, came hours after a senior DPRK diplomat said his country and the US have agreed to resume working-level nuclear negotiations this weekend.

After supervising a test firing of what Pyongyang described as a "newly developed super-large multiple rocket launcher" last month, the DPRK's top leader Kim Jongun was quoted by state media as saying that the system would require a "running fire test" to complete its development.

The DPRK could also be demonstrating its displeasure after the ROK displayed for the first time some of its newly purchased US-made F-35 stealth fighter jets at its Armed Forces Day ceremony on Tuesday. Pyongyang has called the F-35 purchases a grave provocation that violate recent inter-Korean agreements aimed at lowering military tensions.

Kim Dong-yub, an analyst from Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies and a former military official who participated in inter-Korean military talks, said the DPRK's launch was clearly aimed at increasing pressure on Washington ahead of planned weekend talks where it might demand concessions on US-led sanctions against its economy.

Nuclear negotiations halted following a February summit between Kim and President Donald Trump in Vietnam that ended without any agreements.