South Korea's military pushed back against North Korea's claim that its hypersonic missile is difficult to detect and intercept, saying allied defense assets are fully capable of responding.
The Ministry of National Defense said in a notice to the media on the 4th that "the missile North Korea recently launched is assessed to be at a level that can be sufficiently detected and intercepted with the defense assets held by South Korea and the United States."
The ministry stressed that the South Korean military had tracked the North Korean launch from the preparation stage and confirmed the missile's trajectory and launch point immediately after liftoff. It added that North Korea's ballistic missile launches violate United Nations Security Council resolutions and called on Pyongyang to halt its provocations.
North Korea had described the missile, fired the previous morning from the Wonsan area toward the East Sea, as a hypersonic intermediate-range strategic missile. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff put the flight distance at more than 700 kilometers and Japan's Defense Ministry at 680 kilometers, while North Korea claimed the missile flew about 1,000 kilometers.
Kim Yo-jong, director of the general affairs department of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, targeted the detection capabilities of South Korea, the United States and Japan on the day of the launch, saying the target was lost from the first glide point onward. She also cited low-altitude irregular flight and artificial intelligence technology in arguing that interception is effectively impossible.
The Defense Ministry's direct rebuttal underscored its position that the combined South Korea-U.S. defense system can respond even if the North Korean missile has hypersonic characteristics.
Because this launch was conducted toward the northeast, between Japan and Russia, there were some limits to tracking the flight path to the end due to factors such as the curvature of the earth and the detection range of radar assets, according to officials. The government's position is that it has sufficient detection and interception capability if North Korea fires a missile toward the Korean Peninsula.
