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Japan urges China not to escalate East China Sea tension

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga arrives at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's official residence in Tokyo

By Kaori Kaneko

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan said on Monday it would respond firmly after Chinese government vessels intruded into what Japan considers its territorial waters near disputed islands in the East China Sea 14 times at the weekend.

Ties between China and Japan, the world’s second and third largest economies, have for years been plagued by a dispute over the islands that Japan controls, and the waters around them.

The flurry of Chinese incursions into the waters follows a period of sustained pressure on China about its activities in the South China Sea, and a Chinese criticism of what it saw as Japanese interference in that dispute.

Chinese activity near the disputed East China Sea islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China, has heated up since Friday, Japanese officials said, prompting repeated Japanese protests, including three on Sunday alone.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Japan would urge China not to escalate the East China Sea dispute, while also responding firmly and calmly.

Agencies including the coastguard would act closely together to deal with the situation, Suga said.

A Japanese government source, who asked not to be identified, said Japan’s coastguard had stepped up its patrols in the region at the weekend but declined to give further details.

About 230 Chinese fishing vessels were in the area on Saturday, Japan’s foreign ministry said.

China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement on Saturday that China had indisputable sovereignty over the islands and nearby waters.

In the South China Sea, Japan has no claims and China recently rejected warned Japan not to interfere.

The United States, its Southeast Asian allies and Japan have questioned Chinese land reclamation on disputed islands in the South China Sea, especially after an international court last month rejected China’s historic claims to most of that sea.

China has refused to recognize the court ruling. Japan called on China to adhere to it, saying it was binding. China warned Japan not to interfere.

The spike in tension over the East China Sea also follows a Chinese accusation that Japan’s new defense minister, Tomomi Inada, had recklessly misrepresented history after she declined to say after her appointment last week if Japanese troops had massacred civilians in China during World War Two.

The legacy of Japan’s wartime occupation of parts of China is another thorn in relations between the neighbors.

China, and other counties in Asia, in particular South Korea, feel that Japan has never properly atoned for its aggression before and during World War Two.

Relations between South Korea and China have also been strained in recent days by a decision by South Korea and the United States to deploy an advanced anti-missile defense system, to guard against North Korean attacks, that China fears could be used against its military.

South Korea’s presidential office on Sunday rebuked China over its criticism of South Korea’s decision to deploy the anti-missile defense, urging China instead to play a stronger role against North Korea’s provocations.

South Korea and the United States began discussions to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit in the South after the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in defiance of U.N. sanctions.

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Nobuhiro Kubo, Tim Kelly and Kiyoshi Takenaka; writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Latest North Korea missile launch lands near Japan waters, alarms Tokyo

FILE PHOTO - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the 3rd Meeting of Activists in Fisheries under the Korean People's Army

By Ju-min Park and James Pearson

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea launched a ballistic missile on Wednesday that landed in or near Japanese-controlled waters for the first time, the latest in a series of launches by the isolated country in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The main body of the missile landed in Japan’s economic exclusion zone, a Japanese defence official said, escalating regional tensions that were already high after a series of missile launches this year and the decision by the United States to place a sophisticated anti-missile system in South Korea.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe described the launch as a “grave threat” to Japan and said Tokyo “strongly protested”. Japan also said its self-defence force would remain on alert in case of further launches.

A U.S. State Department spokesman condemned the launch, and said it would “only increase the international community’s resolve to counter” North Korea’s actions.

The U.S. Strategic Command said it had detected two missiles, one of which it said exploded immediately after launch.

The missile that landed in the Sea of Japan was launched at about 7:50 a.m. Seoul time (2250 GMT Tuesday) from a region in South Hwanghae province to the southwest of North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, South Korea’s Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

The launch showed North Korea’s ambition to “directly and broadly attack neighbouring countries and target several places in the Republic of Korea such as ports and airfields”, the South Korean office said, referring to South Korea by its official title.

The missile appeared to be a Rodong-type medium-range missile that flew about 1,000 km (620 miles), it said.

TENSIONS HIGH

The United States will begin large-scale annual drills with its ally South Korea later this month that it bills as defensive in nature and not provocative. North Korea typically protests against the drills, which it says are a rehearsal for invasion.

“The North Koreans seem to have been timing their recent short-range and medium-range missile tests to the weeks ahead of U.S.-South Korean joint exercises,” said Joshua Pollack, editor of the U.S.-based Nonproliferation Review.

“If the allies can exercise their armed forces, so can the North,” he said.

On July 19, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles that flew between 500 km and 600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast.

The North later said the launches were part of an exercise simulating preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the U.S. military.

The latest launches follow an agreement last month between South Korea and the United States to deploy an advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defence anti-missile system in the South.

North Korea had threatened a “physical response” against the deployment decision.

The North came under the latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions in March after its fourth nuclear test in January and the launch of a long-range rocket the following month.

Tensions have been high on the Korean peninsula since the January nuclear test. The two Koreas remain technically at war under a truce that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul and Nobuhiro Kubo in Tokyo; Editing by Tony Munroe and Paul Tait)

North Korean seeks refuge in South Korean consulate

A security officer blocks the entrance to the South Korean consulate inside an office building in Hong Kong

By Donny Kwok and Sharon Shi

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Security was tightened at the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong on Thursday after media reports that a North Korean, possibly a student, had sought refuge there.

The North Korean is understood to be a member of a delegation that attended an academic competition at a Hong Kong university two weeks ago, the South China Morning Post said, citing government sources in the Chinese-ruled city.

A student who assisted at a math olympiad held at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) told Reuters the organizing committee of the competition asked for help on July 16 to track down an 18-year-old North Korean who had gone missing after the contest.

The student declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the issue. The organizing committee declined comment. The university could not be reached for comment.

North and South Korea remain technically at war, and the reports of a possible defection are bound to exacerbate tensions.

Uniformed and plainclothes police were patrolling around the office building near the heart of Hong Kong’s financial center where the South Korean consulate is located. Scores of reporters thronged the building.

Local government and consulate officials declined comment.

“We are aware of the report,” a spokeswoman from the Hong Kong police told Reuters, declining to comment further.

The 57th International Mathematical Olympiad was held at the HKUST on July 11-12. An all-male team of six took part from North Korea, according to the contest website. The team finished in 6th place.

South Korea’s foreign ministry declined comment on the media reports in Hong Kong. A ministry official said the South Korean government’s position was not to make any comments related to North Korean defectors, keeping in mind their safety and diplomatic relations with relevant countries.

China’s Foreign Ministry in Beijing also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tensions between North and South Korea have been particularly high since the North’s fourth nuclear test in January. After an announcement by the South in April that 13 workers at a restaurant in China run by the North had sought asylum, Pyongyang said they were abducted by agents from the South.

Hong Kong is ruled by China under a “one country, two systems” formula that accords the former British colony a degree of autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed in mainland China.

In the early 2000s, there was a rash of cases of North Koreans seeking asylum at foreign missions in China, mostly in Beijing, where in some cases they scaled embassy walls and forced their way in.

North Korean defectors mostly come from the poorest parts of the destitute state and usually flee over the traditionally quite porous border with China.

They then seek passage to the South via a third country, or previously via embassies and consulates in China, because Beijing sees them as economic refugees and forcibly repatriates them to North Korea.

(Additional reporting by Lindsy Long in Hong Kong, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Ju-min Park, Jack Kim and James Pearson in Seoul; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

North Korea says decision on nuclear test depends on U.S.: Yonhap

North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that whether it conducted another nuclear test depended on the behavior of the United States, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

The minister, Ri Yong Ho, said, however, that the United States had destroyed the possibility of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, triggering tough new international sanctions. South Korean officials and experts believe it can conduct a fifth test at any time.

“Any additional nuclear test depends on the position of the United States,” Yonhap quoted Ri as telling reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Laos.

Ri added that North Korea was a responsible nuclear state and repeated its position that it would not use atomic arms unless threatened.

“We will not recklessly resort to its use in the absence of substantive threat, unless we are threatened by invasion by another nuclear-power state,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, Elizabeth Trudeau, repeated a U.S. call for North Korea to take “concrete steps” to meet its international obligations – a reference to its past commitments to abandon its nuclear-weapons program.

“We call on North Korea to refrain from actions and rhetoric that further destabilize the region,” she added at a regular briefing when asked about Ri’s comments.

Ri said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had called for a peace treaty with the United States to replace the armistice at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War and the removal of all U.S. troops and equipment from the South.

“This, we believe, is the only way,” Yonhap quoted him as saying.

In earlier remarks to the ASEAN conference, Ri said North Korea had made “an inevitable strategic decision that there is no other option but facing with nuclear deterrent the never ending nuclear blackmails of the U.S.”

North Korea has responded to the latest sanctions with defiance, conducting a series of rocket and missile tests in spite of repeated international condemnation.

(Reporting by Jack Kim and James Pearson in Seoul, Simon Webb in Vientiane and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and James Dalgleish)

U.S. tells China that anti-missile system not a threat

BEIJING (Reuters) – South Korea’s decision to deploy an advanced U.S. anti-missile defense system does not threaten China’s security, a senior U.S. administration official said on Tuesday at the end of a visit to China by U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

The announcement by South Korea and the United States this month that they would deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit has already drawn protests from China that it would destabilize regional security.

The decision is the latest move to squeeze increasingly isolated North Korea, but China worries the system’s radar will be able to track its military capabilities. Russia also opposes the deployment.

“It is purely a defensive measure. It is not aimed at any other party other than North Korea and the threat it poses and this defensive weapons system is neither designed nor capable of threatening China’s security interests,” the official told reporters on a conference call.

South Korea and the United States have said THAAD would only be used in defense against North Korean ballistic missiles.

North Korea has launched a series of missiles in recent months, the latest last week when it fired three ballistic missiles in what it said was a simulated test of preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the U.S. military.

The missiles flew 500-600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast and could have hit anywhere in South Korea if the North intended, the South’s military said.

North Korea came under the latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions in March after its fourth nuclear test in January and the launch of a long-range rocket the following month.

Rice also emphasized the importance of all sides implementing U.N. sanctions on North Korea, and was pleased that China said it remained committed to their implementation, said the senior U.S. official who declined to be identified.

(Reporting by Sue-Lin Wong; editing by Ben Blanchard)

China says South Korea’s THAAD decision harms foundation of trust

A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency.

BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has criticized South Korea’s decision to deploy an advanced U.S. anti-missile defense system to counter threats from North Korea, saying it harmed the foundation of their trust.

The decision is the latest move to squeeze the increasingly isolated North Korea, but China worries the system’s radar will be able to track its military capabilities. Russia also opposes the deployment.

“The recent move by the South Korean side has harmed the foundation of mutual trust between the two countries,” Wang was quoted by South Korean media as telling South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se.

China’s foreign ministry, in a later statement, cited Wang as saying that South Korea should think twice about the deployment and value the good momentum of ties between Beijing and Seoul.

“THAAD is most certainly not a simple technical issue, but an out-and-out strategic one,” Wang said late on Sunday on the sidelines of a conference of foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations in Vientiane.

Yun told Wang the deployment was aimed at protecting South Korea’s security and that it would not damage China’s security interests, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.

In a meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, who is also in Laos, Wang said China and North Korea were traditional friends, and China was committed to the Korean peninsula’s denuclearization and to resolving problems through talks, the ministry added.

At a separate meeting in Beijing, Fan Changlong, one of the vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission that controls China’s military, told U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice that the THAAD deployment would only worsen tension on the Korean peninsula.

“The United States must stop this kind of mistaken action,” China’s Defence Ministry cited Fan as saying.

South Korea and the United States have said THAAD would only be used in defense against North Korean ballistic missiles.

North Korea has launched a series of missiles in recent months, the latest last week when it fired three ballistic missiles that it said was a simulated test of preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the U.S. military.

The missiles flew 500-600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast and could have hit anywhere in South Korea if the North intended, the South’s military said.

North Korea came under the latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions in March after its fourth nuclear test in January and the launch of a long-range rocket the following month.

(Reporting by Jack Kim, additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Exclusive: Possible early North Korean nuclear site found – report

A missile carried by a military vehicle in North Korea

By Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. policy institute said it may have located a secret facility used by North Korea in the early stages of building its program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, which if confirmed would be critical to the success of any future nuclear deal, according to a report seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The report by the Institute for Science and International Security said there has always been doubt about whether North Korea has disclosed all of its nuclear facilities. Confirming their location would be critical to the success of any future agreement to freeze and dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, it said.

The site, 27 miles (43 km) from the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, may have played a key role in development of centrifuges that refine uranium hexafluoride gas into low-enriched and highly enriched uranium, the report said.

“It is necessary to identify where North Korea enriches uranium and part of that is understanding where it has done it in the past,” said David Albright, the institute’s president.

What may once have been the early centrifuge research and development facility is believed to have been inside an aircraft part factory inside a mountain next to Panghyon Air Base. It was located using commercial satellite imagery, the report said.

It was unclear whether the aircraft part factory was still operational but information from defectors indicates there may be three production-scale centrifuge manufacturing plants operating in the country although their locations have not been confirmed, said Albright.

Tensions have been escalating between North Korea and South Korea, the United States and Japan over Pyongyang’s fourth underground nuclear test in January and a series of missile launches.

North Korea’s nuclear program is based on highly enriched uranium and plutonium separated from spent reactor fuel rods.

The reclusive government, which for more than a decade denied having a gas centrifuge program, in November 2010 revealed the existence of a production-scale gas centrifuge plant at Yongbyon but insisted it had no other such facilities.

In June 2000 a Japanese newspaper quoted Chinese sources as saying a facility was located inside Mount Chonma, the report said. Information recently obtained from “knowledgeable government officials” suggested the undeclared facility was associated with an underground aircraft parts factory, it said.

Working with Allsource Analysis, which interprets satellite imagery, the institute determined it most likely was Panghyon Aircraft Plant, which made parts for Soviet-supplied fighters.

The report quoted an unidentified official as saying the site could have held between 200 and 300 centrifuges.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and James Dalgleish)

South Korean President Park calls for unity over THAAD

South Korean President Park Geun-hye arrives for the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit of Heads of State and Government (ASEM11) in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, 15 July 2016.

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Thursday the move to deploy a THAAD missile defense system was “inevitable” because of a growing threat from North Korea and that division in the South over its deployment is what Pyongyang seeks.

North Korea’s launch of three ballistic missiles on Tuesday was the latest evidence that the anti-missile system is needed, Park said at a National Security Council meeting.

This month’s announcement by South Korea and the United States to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit with the U.S. military in a rural melon-farming county in the South triggered loud protests from residents worried about possible negative health and environmental impacts.

“If we continue to be divisive and social confusion grows about a decision we had no choice but to make to protect the country and the lives of our people, it would be exactly where North Korea wants us to go,” Park said, according to her office.

North Korea said on Wednesday it had conducted a ballistic missile test that simulated preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the U.S. military, likely referring to the three missiles fired on Tuesday.

The missiles flew between 500 kms and 600 kms (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast and could have hit anywhere in South Korea if the North intended, the South’s military said.

Many residents of Seongju, about 200 kms (120 miles) from the capital Seoul, joined by opposition members of parliament and civic groups, have demanded the government scrap the decision to site the THAAD battery there.

Some residents bearing South Korean flags and anti-THAAD banners held a rally in central Seoul on Thursday to demonstrate against the decision. Roughly 2,000 people joined the rally, according to police and organizers, including the governor of Seongju who shaved his head in protest.

That follows a raucous standoff last week between residents and the country’s prime minister, who was pelted with eggs and plastic bottles and trapped inside a bus for several hours when he visited the county to explain the THAAD decision. Some residents blamed outside leftist activists for the incident.

Park said North Korea could stage an act of aggression at any time, including possibly a fifth nuclear test or cyber attack against the networks of national and financial institutions.

The North has also increased military equipment near the land and sea border separating the countries, she told the security meeting.

The two Koreas remain technically at war under a truce that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high since North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with a satellite launch and a string of test launches of various missiles.

(Reporting by Jack Kim, additional reporting by Daewoung Kim and James Pearson; Editing by Michael Perry and Himani Sarkar)

North Korea says missile test simulated attack on South’s airfields

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Wednesday it had conducted a ballistic missile test that simulated preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the U.S. military, a likely reference to the launches of three missiles on Tuesday.

The North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, supervised the exercise that successfully tested the simulated detonation of nuclear warheads mounted on missiles, its official KCNA news agency reported.

It did not give the date of the exercise, as it customarily reports activities of its leader without dates or locations. Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party’s official newspaper, carried photographs of Kim with military aides, apparently observing a ballistic missile exercise.

North Korea fired three ballistic missiles that flew between 500 km and 600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military said, in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and the latest in a series of provocative moves by the isolated country after a series of nuclear weapons tests.

“The drill was conducted by limiting the firing range under the simulated conditions of making preemptive strikes at ports and airfields in the operational theater in South Korea where the U.S. imperialists’ nuclear war hardware is to be hurled,” KCNA said.

“And it once again examined the operational features of the detonating devices of nuclear warheads mounted on the ballistic rockets at the designated altitude over the target area.”

Yang Uk, a senior researcher at the Korea Defence and Security Forum and a policy adviser to the South Korean navy, said there was little firm evidence to suggest the North had succeeded in developing a nuclear warhead for missiles.

“But it’s a reminder that they are continuing to pursue nuclear warhead development, and that itself is an escalation of risks for us,” he added.

Tuesday’s missile launches were seen as a show of force a week after South Korea and the United States chose a site in the South to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter threats from the North.

North Korea had threatened a “physical response” to the move.

“The idea seems to be to signal that (U.S.) war plans cannot succeed because if we activated them, the North Koreans would strike as we made the attempt,” said Joshua Pollack, editor of the U.S.-based Nonproliferation Review.

Late on Tuesday, North Korean state media called U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert a “mentally deranged hooligan” and “a heinous war maniac” for flying in a U.S. fighter jet earlier this month.

Reclusive North Korea occasionally publishes insults of U.S. and South Korean officials.

The North and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy Japan, South Korea and the South’s main ally, the United States.

The U.S. air force said Lippert flew in a familiarization flight in an F-16 on July 12 to gain better understanding of the U.S. and South Korea’s joint defense against North Korea.

(Additional reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Nick Macfie)

North Korea fires three ballistic missiles in new show of force

KCNA file picture shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watching the ballistic rocket launch dri

By Jack Kim and James Pearson

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea fired three ballistic missiles on Tuesday which flew between 500 and 600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military said, the latest in a series of provocative moves by the isolated country.

The U.S. military said it detected launches of what it believed were two Scud missiles and one Rodong, a home-grown missile based on Soviet-era Scud technology.

North Korea has fired both types numerous times in recent years, an indication that unlike recent launches that were seen as efforts by the North to improve its missile capability, Tuesday’s were meant as a show of force.

“This smells political rather than technical to me,” said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the U.S.-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California.

“I think the number and distance of the missiles lets them remind the ROK (Republic of Korea) of what they are up against,” she said, referring to South Korea by its official name.

North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the Japan, South Korea and the South’s main ally, the United States.

The launches came nearly a week after South Korea and the United States chose a site in the South to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter threats from the North, which had prompted Pyongyang to threaten a “physical response”.

“Our assessment is that it was done as a show of force,” a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official said at a briefing.

The missiles were launched from an area in the North’s western region called Hwangju between 5:45 a.m. South Korea time (04:45 p.m. EDT Monday) and 6:40 a.m., the South’s military said, an indication that the North was confident they would not crash on its own territory.

“The ballistic missiles’ flight went from 500 km to 600 km, which is a distance far enough to strike all of South Korea, including Busan,” the South’s military said in a statement.

Busan is a South Korean port city in the south.

North Korea has test-fired a series of ballistic missiles in recent months, in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, including intermediate-range missiles in June and a submarine-launched missile this month.

“In addition to the basic goal of enhancing missile units’ readiness to fight, it might be a way of reminding their southern neighbors that the site chosen for a THAAD battery in South Korea is within reach,” Joshua Pollack, editor of the U.S.-based Nonproliferation Review, said of Tuesday’s launches.

South Korea announced last week the THAAD system would be deployed in the southeastern county of Seongju.

In addition to the decision to base a THAAD system in South Korea, the United States recently angered North Korea by blacklisting its leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses.

“The threat to our national security is growing very quickly in a short period of time,” South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn told parliament on Tuesday.

BOMBS, MISSILES AND SANCTIONS

North Korea conducted its fourth test of a nuclear device in January, and activity at its nuclear test site has increased recently, according to media reports in South Korea and Japan citing government officials, as well as a report by Washington-based North Korea monitoring project 38 North.

Following the latest nuclear test and a February space rocket launch that was widely viewed as a missile test in disguise, the U.N. Security Council imposed tough new resolutions that further isolate North Korea.

While China supported tougher sanctions against its neighbor and ally North Korea, it has sharply criticized the decision to base a THAAD battery in South Korea, saying the move would destabilize the security balance in the region.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula is severe and complex and all sides should avoid any actions that raise tensions,” China’s foreign ministry said, echoing previous statements.

Japan denounced the launches.

“The latest launch is a breach of the UN Security Council resolution and is extremely hazardous to shipping and aircraft and we have strongly protested,” the Japanese government said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park, Tim Kelly in Tokyo and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Macfie)

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