South Korea says North Korea fires barrage of short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched a barrage of ballistic missiles toward the sea on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, a day after the North shrugged off a U.S. decision to scale back military drills with South Korea in an apparent bid to resume diplomacy.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches of about 10 short-range ballistic missiles happened from North Korea’s capital region around 5 p.m. (0800 GMT) on Thursday. The military said the missiles were launched toward North Korea’s eastern waters.

The military said South Korea has bolstered its surveillance posture and was closely coordinating information on the launches with the U.S. and Japan.

South Korea’s presidential national security council held an emergency meeting to discuss the launches. After the meeting, the council issued a statement urging North Korea to halt ballistic missile launches that are banned by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The Japanese prime minister’s office had earlier said that it detected a suspected missile launch.

On Wednesday, the South Korean and U.S. militaries said they were scaling back their 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises. U.S. President Donald Trump earlier ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the exercises, just before they began Monday. Trump cited what he said was a good relationship with Kim and South Korea’s refusal to support him over the war in Iran.

Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, dismissed Trump’s overture later Wednesday, saying it was not even worthy of comment.

“The provocative, aggressive nature of the drills won’t change even though their duration and size were reduced,” she said in a statement. “If the U.S. calculates that it can propagate its recent measure as the one of so-called good faith, they will not get the desired answer.”

Kim Yo Jong still refrained from the typical North Korean reaction of fiery rhetoric and said personal relations between her brother and Trump are “still excellent.” That signals North Korea would want to wait for Trump to make bigger concessions before returning to talks.

She denied Trump’s claim that Kim Jong Un had responded to his request for a conversation.

When asked by reporters Wednesday if he would be meeting with Kim Jong Un this year, Trump said that “Yeah, I will be.” He wouldn’t answer a question about whether he is exchanging letters with Kim but said he gets along with him.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield is one of the main military exercises conducted by the U.S. and South Korea annually to enhance their ability to cope with potential North Korean aggression. Washington and Seoul say their drills are defensive in nature, but North Korea calls them an invasion rehearsal and often reacts with weapons tests.

Before this month’s drills started, North Korea accused the U.S. and South Korea of plotting more provocative exercises this summer and vowed to respond with “a new level of a deterrent.” Days before the drills’ start, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea in its first such launches since late June.

Trump’s earlier diplomacy with Kim Jong Un collapsed in 2019 due to disputes over how much sanctions relief North Korea should be given in return for dismantling its main nuclear complex, a limited denuclearization step. Kim has since shunned any talks with the U.S., pushed to modernize weapons arsenals and expanded cooperation with Russia.

Kim has said he won’t place his nuclear program back on the negotiating table. Experts say Kim has more leverage than when he first held talks with Trump in 2018 and 2019. They say Kim likely hopes to eventually win international recognition as a nuclear state and extensive sanctions relief in exchange for only limited steps toward denuclearization.

Hyung-jin Kim, The Associated Press