North Korea fired several ballistic missiles into the sea Monday, South Korea’s military said, hours after South Korean and US troops kicked off their large annual combined drills, which the North views as an invasion rehearsal.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile firings, North Korea’s fifth missile launch event this year, were detected from the North’s southwestern Hwanghae province. It called the weapons close-range but didn’t say how far they flew.
The military said South Korea bolstered its surveillance posture and is closely coordinating with the United States.
Earlier Monday, the South Korean and US militaries began their annual Freedom Shield command post exercise, their first major combined training of President Donald Trump’s second term.
The allies have already been engaging in diverse field training exercises in connection with the Freedom Shield training.
Earlier in the day, North Korea on Monday condemned joint US-South Korean military drills as a “provocative act”, warning of the danger of sparking war with “an accidental single shot,” days after Seoul’s air force mistakenly bombed a village on its own territory.
“This is a dangerous provocative act of leading the acute situation on the Korean peninsula, which may spark off a physical conflict between the two sides by means of an accidental single shot,” said Pyongyang’s foreign ministry, as quoted by state media.
