North Korea fired a salvo of short-range ballistic missiles early Tuesday, Seoul's military said, Pyongyang's second launch in days and just hours before Americans vote for a new president.
The nuclear-armed North last week test-fired what it said was its most advanced and powerful solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in Kim Jong Un's first weapons test since being accused of sending soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine.
Pyongyang, which has denied the deployment, is under growing international pressure to withdraw its troops from Russia, with Seoul warning Tuesday that thousands of soldiers were being deployed to frontline areas, including Kursk.
Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the launch of "several short-range ballistic missiles" at around 7:30 am Tuesday (2230 GMT) into waters east of the Korean peninsula.
The missiles flew approximately 400 kilometers (248 miles) and Seoul's military said it had tracked the launch in real time while sharing information with Tokyo and Washington.
"In preparation for additional launches, our military has strengthened surveillance and alertness," it added.
Tokyo also confirmed Pyongyang's latest weapons test, with top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi saying that the North's "repeated launches of ballistic missiles, threaten the peace and security of our country".
On Sunday, South Korea, Japan and the United States conducted a joint air drill involving a US B-1B bomber, South Korean F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets, and Japanese F-2 jets, in response to the ICBM launch.
Such joint drills infuriate Pyongyang, which views them as rehearsals for invasion.
Pyongyang's latest launch was "a direct response to the trilateral aerial exercises over the weekend", Han Kwon-hee of the Korea Association of Defence Industry Studies told AFP.
"Given it was a salvo of short-range missiles, the North is indicating that it not only has long-range missiles capable of reaching the US, but also short-range ones to target all bases in South Korea and Japan," Han added.
Kim Yo Jong, sister of the country's leader and a key spokesperson, called the US-South Korea-Japan exercises an "action-based explanation of the most hostile and dangerous aggressive nature of the enemy toward our Republic."
In a statement carried Tuesday by the official Korean Central News Agency, she said the drill was "absolute proof of the validity and urgency of the line of building up the nuclear forces we have opted for and put into practice."
Seoul has long accused the nuclear-armed North of sending weapons to help Moscow fight Kyiv and alleged that Pyongyang has moved to deploy soldiers en masse since Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defence deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.
"More than 10,000 North Korean soldiers are currently in Russia, and we assess that a significant portion of them are deployed to frontline areas, including Kursk," Jeon Ha-gyu, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, said Tuesday.
Seoul, a major weapons exporter, has said it is reviewing whether to send weapons directly to Ukraine in response, something it has previously resisted due to longstanding domestic policy that prevents it from providing weaponry into active conflicts.
With its recent testing spate, "Pyongyang is showing that its contribution of weapons and troops to Russia's war in Ukraine does not curtail its military activities closer to home," said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
"On the contrary, cooperation with Moscow appears to enable blatant violations of UN Security Council resolutions."
On Monday, Robert Wood, US deputy ambassador to the UN, slammed the North's advancing ballistic missile programme and said Russia and China were preventing the UN from holding Pyongyang to account.
Beijing and Moscow "have repeatedly shielded the DPRK, contributing to the normalisation of these tests and emboldening the DPRK to further violate this Council's sanctions and resolutions," he said, referring to the North by its official name.
