A North Korean long-range rocket is launched in this file still image taken from KRT video footage. — Reuters photo
TOTTORI: A metal object that looks like part of a long-range missile that North Korean fired in February has been found on a shore in Tottori Prefecture, according to the western Japan prefecture, Japan’s Jiji Press reported.
An official of the prefectural government discovered the possible missile fragment on the beach in the town of Yurihama Thursday afternoon, the Tottori government said Friday.
The cylindrical object, some 1.8 meters in length and 1.2 meters in diameter, has a red line on the conically shaped head and a blue line on the bottom, with two numbers–1 and 2–lettered in the middle.
It closely resembles a South Korean-recovered object believed to be a fragment of a long-range missile that fell in the East China Sea after flying over Okinawa Prefecture on Feb. 7, the Tottori government said.
In Tokyo Friday, Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters that his ministry will try to identify the object as soon as possible by sending an investigation team to Tottori. The possibility cannot be ruled out that it is a portion of a North Korean missile.
On Saturday, Western rocket experts told Jiji Press in Seoul that the object should be the nose fairing for a ballistic missile launched by North Korea.
The fragment “definitely looks like a ‘nose fairing half’ from a rocket” and the nose corn is likely “to be from a North Korean launch,” said Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics of the United States.
Meanwhile, Tal Inbar, head of the Space Research Center of the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies in Israel, stressed that he has “no doubt” the fragment is the fairing of the North Korean missile.
“South Korea found just one half of the fairing from the Feb. 7 launch, and this is the second part,” he pointed out. – Bernama