by Cynthia Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea fired two new short-range ballistic missiles off its eastern coast on Saturday, the South Korean military said.
This is the fourth launch in a week carried out by Pyongyang, demonstrations of force which maintain tension on the Korean peninsula.
The firings came after joint anti-submarine warfare exercises by the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese navies on Friday, the first of their kind in five years, and after the visit to the region in recent days by the vice- US President, Kamala Harris.
The two short-range missiles were fired from Sunan, north of North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
He estimates that the missiles have a range of 350 kilometers, can climb to an altitude of 30 km and are capable of reaching a speed of Mach 6 (just over 7,300 km/h).
The Japanese Coast Guard reported on their side at least two test firings of North Korean ballistic missiles. Tokyo protested to Pyongyang through official diplomatic channels, Defense Minister Toshiro Ino said.
The US military command for the Indo-Pacific zone has meanwhile declared to be informed of the shootings, specifying that it concluded that they did not constitute an immediate threat to the territories and personnel of the United States, nor to their allies.
North Korea conducted missile launches before and after Kamala Harris’ visit to South Korea this week, as well as the first test of an intercontinental missile since 2017.
Seoul said it expects Pyongyang to conduct a nuclear test soon, citing the period from October 16 to November 7, between the Chinese Communist Party congress and the midterm elections in the United States.
(Report Cynthia Kim and Chang-Ran Kim, with Josh Smith and Ju-min Park, French version Marc Angrand)
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