The South Korean military said North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile early Friday morning from a site near the capital of Pyongyang, with a Japanese government spokesperson saying it flew into the sea 1,242 miles east of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
The missile is believed to have reached an altitude of 478 miles and traveled about 2,300 miles, the military said. On Thursday, a North Korean state agency called the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee warned that the "four islands of the [Japanese] archipelago should be sunken into the sea by [our] nuclear bomb," and "Japan is no longer needed to exist near us." In response to this latest launch of a missile over Japan, the second in less than three weeks, South Korean President Moon Jae-in called an emergency meeting of his national security council.
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