While the world's eyes are on the sanctions affecting Russia, Tokyo is turning its attention to North Korea.

Japan announced on Friday new sanctions against the country after the test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile last week.

The move follows calls from Washington for tougher international action against Pyongyang.

Japan already imposes a trade embargo on North Korea, and bans its ships from entering Japanese ports as part of unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang, but said on Friday it would "designate four groups and nine individuals implicated in nuclear and missile development.

These entities and individuals will be “subject to an asset freeze,” Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.

The “monster missile”

Tokyo's move comes after China and Russia refused to tighten sanctions on Pyongyang, as Washington demanded at the UN Security Council last week after North Korea fired an ICBM missile who possesses nuclear weapons.

On March 24, North Korea claimed to have successfully launched its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), a Hwasong-17, dubbed the "monster missile", but US and South Korean intelligence agencies concluded that it was actually the Hwasong-15, a less advanced ICBM that had already been tested in 2017. The test firing of this missile, however, angered Japan, as the projectile fell inside its exclusive economic zone.

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