North Korea launched an "unidentified bullet" from the Sunan area which appears to have fallen shortly thereafter.The news was given by the South Korean military when it was 1:00 am in Italy.
"From the signals we have, it could be a Hwasong-17", the so-called "monster missile" said Cheong Seong-chang, a researcher at the South Korean Sejong Institute.
"With Russia now unlikely to endorse new sanctions in the North after the invasion of Ukraine, Pyongyang must have felt it was the optimal time to proceed."
According to the researcher, it is possible that there may be other tests for the development of the "monster missile" and it is likely that they will arrive by April 15 when we will celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of the founder and former president Kim Il-sung.
In recent days, the United States had warned that the North Korean regime was preparing to launch its first "full-range" ICBM since 2017. Since the beginning of the year, North Korea, a nuclear power, had already conducted at least nine missile tests attracting the condemnation of the USA, Japan, South Korea and the international community.
The US military command for the Indo-Pacific area reported that it was the "launch of a ballistic missile" and condemned the test urging Pyongyang to refrain from further destabilizing acts.
For the US, multi-warhead missiles such as Hwasong-17 mark "a serious escalation" in the North Korean military program.
So far, the North Korean regime has adhered to the unilateral moratorium on long-range missile and nuclear weapons testing initiated in 2017 during talks between Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump.