South Korea's military said on Monday that North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters, the latest in a recent series of weapons demonstrations that has heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula amid a prolonged freeze in diplomacy.
Jang Do-young, spokesperson of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said missiles of various types were launched from an area around Pyongyang, where North Korea's main airport has served as a major launch site in recent years. According to South Korean military officials, at least one missile flew more than 900 kilometers (559 miles) before falling into the sea. The joint chiefs did not specify the total number of missiles detected or provide flight details for all weapons tested.
Japan independently detected at least two missiles launched 17 minutes apart, according to Deputy Defense Minister Takashi Koyari. Japan reported that the first missile flew approximately 220 kilometers (137 miles) and the second traveled more than 910 kilometers (565 miles), following an "irregular" flight path that Japanese officials characterized as suggesting a hypersonic weapon. The missiles landed in waters outside Japan's exclusive economic zone, and there were no reports of damage to aircraft or vessels.
The test came days after South Korea on Friday, October 9, flight-tested its first domestically developed hypersonic weapon, designed to fly at least five times the speed of sound and evade missile defense systems. President Lee Jae Myung described the South Korean test as critical to strengthening the nation's conventional defense capabilities. South Korean military officials said the latest North Korean launches likely were intended both to advance the country's missile technologies and to serve as a possible response to the South's hypersonic test.
North Korea has been accelerating weapons testing as it seeks to expand its arsenal of nuclear-capable systems. On October 3, the regime conducted what it described as a hypersonic intermediate-range missile test designed to evade missile defenses in South Korea and Japan. The country has also conducted other missile tests and live-fire drills and commissioned a new warship under leader Kim Jong Un, who continues to display his nuclear weapons program while rejecting U.S. and South Korean offers to resume long-stalled diplomacy.
South Korea's presidential national security office called for North Korea to "immediately cease" its repeated ballistic launches, which the office said violate United Nations Security Council resolutions against the North and "do not help manage the current situation on the Korean Peninsula." Japan lodged a formal protest to North Korea through their respective embassies in Beijing.
Regional tensions have been further heightened by other incidents. Three South Korean soldiers were injured in land mine explosions last month near the heavily armed inter-Korean border. South Korea's military and the U.S.-led United Nations Command concluded that the devices were planted by North Korea, which has denied responsibility and ridiculed South Korea's demands for an apology.
Kim Jong Un has halted all diplomacy and cooperation with South Korea in recent years, describing the neighbor as a permanent enemy during a prolonged stalemate in nuclear negotiations with Washington. He has rebuffed U.S. President Donald Trump's calls to revive diplomacy, which broke down in 2019, with his government demanding that Washington abandon its "hostile" policy toward Pyongyang and drop demands for North Korea's denuclearization as a precondition for talks.
