SEOUL: North Korea fired a ballistic missile, South Korea’s military said on Thursday, the latest in a series of banned weapons tests conducted by Pyongyang this year.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile towards the East Sea (Sea of Japan).
According to AFP, Japan also confirmed the missile launch, with its defence ministry saying that two ballistic missiles fired by North Korea landed in waters within Japan’s exclusive economic zone on Thursday.
It said that the two ballistic missiles fell inside the exclusive economic zone. The zone extends up to two hundred nautical miles from Japan’s coast, beyond the vorders of its territorial waters, AFP reported.
North Korea, South Korea Ties
Ties between the two spheres of Korea are at one of their lowest points in years, with diplomacy stopped and Kim Jong Un declaring his nation an “irreversible” nuclear power and emphasizing for ramped-up weapons manufacturing, including tactical nukes.
North Korea has carried out multiple sanctions-busting tests this year, including the firing of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles and trying to put a military surveillance satellite into orbit in May.
In response, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s hawkish administration has bolstered defence cooperation with the US, staging regular large-scale joint military exercises, including live-fire “annihilation” drills which are currently underway.
Such drills infuriate Pyongyang, which deemed them as rehearsals for the attack.
A spokesperson for North Korea’s Ministry of National Defence said that the ongoing exercises were targeting the DPRK by massively mobilizing different types of offensive weapons and equipment.
He added that the South’s response to this is inevitable. The armed forces will fully counter any kind of demonstrative measures and provocation of the enemies.
