North Korea conducted its second ballistic missile launch of the new year last week, testing a suspected “hypersonic” missile that sparked concerns in Washington that the regime in Pyongyang is increasing the pace of its provocations in hopes of pressuring the Biden administration into making concessions.

While the missile flew about 435 miles before crashing into the sea, it traveled at roughly 10 times the speed of sound. U.S. authorities took the unusual step of halting operations and takeoffs and landings at airports along the West Coast during the moments after the launch was detected.

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Officials said commercial flights were briefly halted out of an abundance of caution, although they would not specify which airports were affected or say explicitly what triggered the move. The Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command said only that the launch did not pose an “immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to our allies.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un personally witnessed the test. It was the first time the dictator officially attended a test firing in nearly a year.

The state-controlled KCNA news agency reported that Mr. Kim congratulated North Korea’s missile program scientists and urged them to “further accelerate the efforts to steadily build up the country’s strategic military muscle both in quality and quantity and further modernize the army.”

David Maxwell, a retired Special Forces colonel focused on North Korea at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the airport grounding order was either a mistake or an overreaction. “It certainly was not necessary, but it likely pleased Kim Jong-un because his actions had some effect,” Mr. Maxwell told The Washington Times.

He said there could be a range of motivations behind the Kim regime’s decision to carry out the launch. “The first reason could simply be to test to advance the missile program. It may not be meant as a message at all. They must test their systems to continue to develop them,” Mr. Maxwell said.

Click here to listen to a video on how all air traffic in the United States halted for 7 minutes for the first time since 9/11 when North Korea launched this missile.

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(Excerpt from The Washington Times. Article written by Guy Taylor and Mike Glenn. Photo credit : UnSplash)