Pyongyang yesterday fired two ballistic missiles, Seoul said, days after a similar launch that North Korea described as a warning to the South over planned joint military drills with the US.
The two devices were fired from the Wonsan area on the east coast at dawn and flew about 250km, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“We stress a series of missile launches do not help ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula and urge North Korea to refrain from such acts,” it said in a statement.
North Korea is banned from launching ballistic missiles under UN Security Council resolutions, but it was the second such firing in less than a week, despite June’s meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump.
Pyongyang and Washington are engaged in a long-running diplomatic process over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs that has seen three high-profile encounters between their leaders in the space of a year.
They agreed to resume talks during their impromptu encounter in the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula, but that working-level dialogue has yet to begin.
Pyongyang has warned that the negotiations could be derailed by Washington and Seoul’s refusal to scrap the annual maneuvers between their forces.
On his way to the ASEAN foreign minister’s meeting in Bangkok this week, where North Korea is high on the agenda, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that the talks had been expected “within weeks,” but were taking “a little bit longer.”
There was no immediate comment from Pyongyang on the latest launch, but Harry Kazianis of the Center for the National Interest in Washington said that it was a warning to the two security allies to stop the exercises, or North Korea would “raise tensions to a slow boil over time.”
Pyongyang would carry out more launches before the drills begin next week and again afterward, he predicted, adding: “The only question is: Would the Kim regime dare test an ICBM, or a long-range missile, that could hit the US homeland?”
The English-language Korea Times condemned what it called the US president’s “willful ignorance” in an opinion piece on Tuesday, before the latest launches.
Trump “gives the impression that he doesn’t mind its missile launches as long as they are short-range, and not threatening the US,” it said.
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