North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles off its west coast on Monday, not long after warning of the risk of “physical conflict” over the US and South Korea kicking off their annual military drills.
South Korea’s military said it detected the launch of missiles from the Hwanghae province of the North into the Yellow Sea around 1.50pm on Monday. It did not provide further details.
The missiles were fired soon after Pyongyang condemned the drills by the US and South Korea as a “dangerous provocative act” and warned of the risk of conflict.
The annual “Freedom Shield 2025” drills, a simulated command post training and related field exercises, started on Monday and were scheduled to end on 20 March.
A live-fire drill in preparation for Freedom Shield last week caused alarm and protests in the South after military jets accidentally bombed civilians in a rural region, injuring at least 29 people.
A pair of South Korean KF-16 fighters dropped eight MK-82 bombs outside a firing range, the air force said in a statement apologising for the incident.
The United States Forces Korea said in a statement that no American aircraft were involved in the exercise at the time of the incident.
The foreign ministry in Pyongyang described the ongoing drills as an “aggressive and confrontational war rehearsal” that threatened the ceasefire on the Korean peninsula, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.
“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, to the extreme point,” it said.
Any kind of military cooperation or drills between Washington and Seoul is viewed as a rehearsal for invasion by Pyongyang, which often responds with the test firing of missiles and fiery rhetoric.
The US and South Korea maintain that the drills are necessary to prepare their joint defences in the event of an attack by North Korea.
Meanwhile, North Korea on Saturday unveiled a nuclear-powered submarine for the first time. Strategic experts said the weapons system could pose a major security threat to South Korea and the US.
Pictures released by state media showed leader Kim Jong Un visiting an under-construction “nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine”.
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