North Korea has fired eight short-range ballistic missiles towards the sea off its east coast, a day after South Korea and the US wrapped up military exercises involving an American aircraft carrier.
Possibly setting a single-day record for North Korean ballistic launches, the missiles were fired in succession over 35 minutes on Sunday from at least four different locations, including from western and eastern coastal areas and two inland areas north of and near the capital, Pyongyang, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said.
It said the missiles flew 110 to 670km (68 to 416 miles) at maximum altitudes of 25 to 80km while reaching speeds of mach 3 to 6.
In response, the South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, convened a national security council meeting and ordered “expanded deterrence of South Korea and the United States and continued reinforcement of united defence posture”.
The meeting concluded that the missile launch was North Korea’s “test and challenge” of the security readiness of South Korea’s new administration, which took office last month.
The Japanese defence minister, Nobuo Kishi, said the act “cannot be tolerated”. Kishi said none of the missiles fell inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone but at least one missile had a variable trajectory, which indicates it could manoeuvre to evade missile defences.
On Saturday the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan concluded a three-day naval drill with South Korea in the Philippine Sea, apparently their first joint drill involving a carrier since November 2017.
Pyongyang’s launch also followed a visit to Seoul by the US point man on North Korean affairs, special representative Sung Kim, who departed on Saturday.
He met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Kim Gunn and Takehiro Funakoshi, on Friday to prepare for “all contingencies” amid signs North Korea was preparing to conduct a nuclear test for the first time since 2017.