North Korea launched two missiles into waters off its east coast in a show of anger hours after the U.S. brought a submarine capable of firing nuclear ballistic missiles to a port in South Korea for the first time in about four decades.
North Korea fired two, short-range ballistic missiles early Wednesday from a site near Pyongyang’s international airport at around 3:30 a.m. and 3:46 a.m., South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The missiles flew about 550 kilometers (340 miles), it said, calling the launches a “grave provocation.”
The missile test escalated tensions on the peninsula after the USS Kentucky, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, arrived in the South Korean port of Busan on Tuesday and North Korea detained a U.S. soldier who intentionally walked across the border from the south side of a joint truce village in the Joint Security Area.
