North Korea test-fired an unidentified projectile towards the East Sea, South Korea and Japan said on Sunday, prompting Seoul to convene an urgent meeting.
South Korea’s joint chief of staff said the projectile was launched by Pyongyang at 3pm local time from its eastern coast, without providing additional details about the launch, including the projectile’s trajectory.
The Japanese Coast Guard also reported the launch of a “suspected ballistic missile”, saying it fell outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
The reported missile launch comes as Pyongyang denounced a US-led naval drill including South Korea and Japan, which ran from 29 August to 10 September near Guam in the western North Pacific Ocean.
The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un blamed US-led military drills for "ever-worsening" tensions in the Korean Peninsula and vowed that the country would not change course in strengthening its nuclear arsenal.
“It is inevitable that outsiders’ greater threat to our national security makes our physical power grow stronger ceaselessly in a corresponding manner,” Kim Yo Jong said in an early-morning statement carried by North Korean state media on Friday.
She described the five-day Freedom Edge exercise as US-led “war rehearsals”.
“Our will to defend our sovereignty will be expressed in clearer action and there will be never ever change in the course of intensifying the nuclear war deterrence,” she said.
Following the launch, South Korea’s presidential office convened a National Security Council (NSC) meeting on Sunday.
Condemning the launch, the second in about a week following a previous test on 12 September, the NSC urged Pyongyang to immediately cease missile activity, warning that the test directly violates United Nations Security Council resolutions.
North Korea has continued to test missiles regularly after US president Donald Trump recently scaled back a major military exercise with South Korea in an apparent effort to revive diplomacy with Mr Kim. He ordered the Pentagon to "substantially reduce" the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise with South Korea. He cited what he called a good relationship with Mr Kim, who has called such drills invasion rehearsals.
Mr Kim has been focusing on expanding his nuclear arsenal after his earlier high-stakes diplomacy with Mr Trump collapsed in 2019.
However, his sister shrugged off Mr Trump's overture, saying that shortening the drill wouldn't change its “provocative, aggressive nature”.
North Korea’s military later launched about 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea, apparently following through with a previous threat to respond to the US-South Korean drill.
