By Daniel DePetris
U.S., South Korean, and Japanese officials frequently employ the word "provocative" whenever North Korea conducts a missile test, regardless of what type of missile was actually launched. The truth, however, is that Pyongyang has flown too many missiles into the sky that the tests have become quite regular. What government officials call "provocative" and "destabilizing" is in fact normalized, even if the world generally disapproves of what North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is doing.
And let's face it, he's doing a lot. Pyongyang has test fired about 40 missiles in 2022, the highest number of launches in a single year. Five ballistic missiles have been sent on various trajectories in a 10-day stretch. The most recent, an Oct. 4 test of the Hwasong-12, an intermediate range ballistic missile, flew over Japan, the first time a North Korean projectile traversed Japanese territory since 2017. According to government estimates, the distance of the Oct. 4 test exceeded anything else the North has tested in the decades since, traveling nearly 4,600 kilometers before splashing into the Pacific Ocean.
Like their South Korean neighbors, Japan has gotten inured to this kind of activity from the North. But this week's launch was different than the others, forcing Tokyo to activate an early-warning system for residents in the northern Aomori and Hokkaido prefectures. The fact the Hwasong-12 was nowhere near a populated area and was flying higher than the International Space Station didn't make it any less worrisome for some Japanese in the north, who received alerts on their phones and had some train services suspended. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was understandably outraged at the incident, with his office releasing a lengthy press statement denouncing the launch as "totally unacceptable," as well as a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions.
This piece was originally published in Newsweek on October 6, 2022. Read more HERE.