NEWS: North Korea
North Korea launched a hypersonic missile that shut down US airports.

Air­ports on the west coast of the Unit­ed States have been tem­porar­i­ly locked down after North Korea con­duct­ed anoth­er hyper­son­ic mis­sile launch test.

The Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty issued a state­ment con­firm­ing that flights were briefly sus­pend­ed after the incident.

North Korea says leader Kim Jong-un per­son­al­ly over­saw the suc­cess­ful test, as hyper­son­ic mis­sile capa­bil­i­ty is a “top pri­or­i­ty” for the her­mit nation.

After the launch, Kim said North Korea should “fur­ther accel­er­ate its efforts to grad­u­al­ly strength­en the coun­try’s strate­gic mil­i­tary pow­er, both in qual­i­ty and quantity.”

While the FAA has not con­firmed that the launch was respon­si­ble for the sub­se­quent shut­down, a state­ment said, “As a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, the FAA tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed depar­tures from some West Coast air­ports on Mon­day evening. Full oper­a­tions resumed in less than 15 min­utes. The FAA reg­u­lar­ly takes pre­cau­tion­ary measures.

“We are look­ing at the process around this ground stop­page as we are doing after all of these events.”

The US gov­ern­ment has now imposed sanc­tions on five North Kore­an offi­cials in response to the test, which is the sec­ond in a week.

US Trea­sury Ter­ror­ism and Finan­cial Intel­li­gence Chief Bri­an Nel­son said: “The lat­est mis­sile launch­es by the DPRK (Demo­c­ra­t­ic Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Korea) are fur­ther proof that it con­tin­ues to advance pro­hib­it­ed pro­grams despite calls from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for diplo­ma­cy and denuclearization.

Sanc­tions were imposed on the role of offi­cials in procur­ing tech­nol­o­gy and equip­ment for mis­sile pro­grams in North Korea.

Sanc­tions were also ordered against anoth­er North Kore­an, as well as a Russ­ian com­pa­ny and a Russ­ian nation­al who alleged­ly sup­port­ed the coun­try’s nuclear weapons devel­op­ment program.

The lat­est test of this pro­gram has been report­ed by sev­er­al coun­tries, includ­ing North Kore­a’s clos­est neigh­bor, South Korea, and Japan.

The gov­ern­ment of Japan said it had detect­ed a “bal­lis­tic mis­sile-like object” and the South Kore­a’s Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said: “Our mil­i­tary has detect­ed a sus­pect­ed bal­lis­tic mis­sile fired by Korea from the North from the main­land to the East Sea “.

Pri­or to announc­ing the launch, North Kore­an state media said the mis­sile was a hyper­son­ic glide vehi­cle which — after exit­ing the rock­et thruster — per­formed a “glide” and demon­strat­ed a “maneu­ver. in a corkscrew ”before col­lid­ing with a sea tar­get thou­sands of km away.

Mr. Kim’s nation con­tin­ues to forge ahead in its attempts to acquire nuclear capa­bil­i­ties, despite grow­ing calls from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to cease its ambitions.