North Korea fires ballistic missile, first since Trump elected in U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-fires-ballistic-missile-first-since-trump-elected-in-us/2017/02/11/42d6cb57-d187-4b2a-bafb-6834c97799b0_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_nkorea723pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.b b7542374275
TOKYO – North Korea fired a ballistic missile Sunday morning, its first launch in four months and the first since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.
The launch happened while Trump was hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at his golf resort in Florida, and analysts said that the hawkish Abe will likely push Trump issue a strong rebuke.
“I don’t think this is designed to respond to Trump, I think this is part of Kim’s continued efforts to try to advance his programs,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a senior non-proliferation official in the Obama administration now at Harvard’s Belfer Center. “But it has the added effect of calling Trump’s bluff. The real question is not what North Korea has done, but what the U.S. is going to do about it,” Wolfsthal said.
The missile was fired shortly before 8 a.m. from a known test site in North Pyongan province in the west of the country, not far from the border with China, and flew over the Korean peninsula and into the Sea of Japan, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said.