North Korea fires unidentified ballistic missile — U.S. government sources

North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday, two U.S. government sources said, a week after President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a U.S list of countries that it says support terrorism.  

Later, the Pentagon said that it had detected a "probable" missile launch from North Korea. "We are in the process of assessing the situation and will provide additional details when available," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning told reporters.  

He said the probable launch was detected at 1:30 p.m. EST. The missile flew to the east and the South Korean military is analyzing details of the launch with the United States, according to a report from South Korean news agency Yonhap, citing South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff.  

NHK in Japan, citing the defense ministry, reported that the missile may have landed in the water of Japan's exclusive economic zone. The U.S. source told Reuters no further details were immediately available. 

Asahi Shimbun in Japan also reported that North Korea had fired a ballistic missile early on Wednesday.  U.S. stocks pared gains after reports of the missile launch. The S&P 500 index was up half a percent in midafternoon.   

Two authoritative U.S. government sources said earlier that U.S. government experts believed North Korea could conduct a new missile test within days, in what would be its first launch since it fired a missile over Japan in mid-September.   

The U.S. officials declined to say what type of missile they thought North Korea might test, but noted that Pyongyang had been working to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States and had already tested inter-continental ballistic missiles.   

After firing missiles at a rate of about two or three a month since April, North Korea paused its missile launches in late September, after it fired a missile that passed over Japan’s northern Hokkaido island on Sept. 15. 

Source: Reuters