Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Japan would "never tolerate" what he called DPRK's "dangerous provocative action that threatens world peace" following the missile launch over his country.
"We can never tolerate that North Korea (DPRK) trampled on the international community's strong, united resolve toward peace that has been shown in UN resolutions and went ahead again with this outrageous act," Abe told reporters.
"If North Korea continues to walk down this path, it has no bright future. We must make North Korea understand this," he added.
Meanwhile, the United States called on China and Russia to take "direct actions" to rein in the DPRK after it fired a ballistic missile over Japan into the Pacific.
"China supplies North Korea (DPRK) with most of its oil. Russia is the largest employer of North Korean forced labor," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement.
"China and Russia must indicate their intolerance for these reckless missile launches by taking direct actions of their own."
DPRK's latest provocation came amid high tensions over its banned weapons programs and just two weeks after it had launched a Hwasong-12 (KN17 in US appellation) intermediate range missile, which also overflew Japan, on August 29.
U.S. identifies new DPRK missile
Amid the widespread outrage over DPRK's missile launches, new U.S. military intelligence suggests Pyongyang might have developed a new variant of missiles.
On August 26, prior to its launch of a Hwasong-12 over Japan, DPRK had launched three missiles, which had remained unidentified, or misidentified, so far.
However, a new U.S. military intelligence appears to have identified and designated these missiles as a new type of DPRK's short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) and a modification of its existing Scud-B (Hwasong-5 in DPRK appellation) missiles, according to a report by the Tokyo-headquartered The Diplomat magazine. The U.S. has designated the new missiles as KN21.
"Three units of the ballistic missiles in question, which have been newly designated the KN21 by the United States, were tested on August 26 in quick succession from North Korea's (DPRK's) missile launch site at Kittaeryong," The Diplomat reported quoting U.S. government sources with knowledge of the latest US intelligence assessments.
DPRK launched those missiles at a depressed trajectory intentionally, according to a U.S. government source. The SRBMs were launched around early morning from a site in Gangwon Province, with the second one appeared to have blown up almost immediately while another two flew about 250 kilometers in a northeastern direction, before crashing into the Sea of Japan.
The missiles had first been incorrectly assessed by the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) to have all failed. PACOM later revised its assessment. Intelligence agencies from Republic of Korea (ROK) wrongly identified the missiles as projectiles from a KN09 multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) – an assessment likely based on the fact that these were unitary, non-separating Scuds with an unusual trajectory.
Given that the August 26 launches were of three projectiles launching exactly 10 minutes apart, The Diplomat reported that the test was most likely for developmental purposes. The SRBMs that were tested had "similar guidance capabilities as the KN18," the report quoted a U.S. government source as saying.
DPRK has not released any imagery of its August 26 SRBM launches, but the missiles are thought to also possess control surfaces (fins) on the warhead, like the KN18.
The KN18 is a SRBM with a maneuvering reentry vehicle (MaRV). The DPRK first displayed the KN18 at its annual military parade in Pyongyang on April 16, 2017, where the missile was seen carried on a tracked transporter erector launcher. Its first known flight test occurred on May 28, 2017. An apparent success, the missile flew around 450 kilometers before landing in the Sea of Japan.
This year's introduction of the KN18 and KN21 suggests that DPRK's missile engineers are making important upgrades to the country's considerable existing inventory of older Scuds to make them more useful war-fighting tools.
"Between the KN18 and the KN21, North Korea (DPRK) has now shown itself capable of converting its less accurate, older Scuds to what appear to be considerably more precise systems. In any future conflict, these sorts of comparatively more precise Scuds would be useful in targeting U.S. and South Korean military positions and command/control nodes on the Peninsula with nuclear and conventional payloads," The Diplomat said.
