NATIONAL SECURITY/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/SOUTH KOREA: “North Korea test-fired a missile towards the east in the early hours of Wednesday [11-29-17] morning, South Korean authorities said, ending a more than two-month hiatus from Pyongyang and threatening to increase tensions with the U.S. and in the region.
The missile, which South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said was fired at 2:47 a.m. Pyongyang time from Pyongsong, just north of the capital, comes weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump visited the region and roughly a week after he redesignated North Korea as a state sponsor of terror.
South Korean authorities said they were working with the U.S. to confirm details of the launch.
Prior to the test-firing, officials in Washington and Seoul openly wondered about the reasons behind the relatively long break in missile or nuclear tests from Pyongyang.
Just hours earlier on Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea’s top minister on North Korean affairs, Cho Myoung-gyon, played down the silence, noting that the North rarely fires missiles during the final months of the year.
The most recent North Korean missile was an intermediate-range ballistic missile fired over the Japanese mainland on Sept. 15.”
-Jonathan Cheng, “North Korea Fires Missile Towards the East, South Korea Says,” The Wall Street Journal online, Nov. 28, 2017 02:15pm