SEOUL: South Korean media said Wednesday that North Korea launched multiple cruise missiles into the Yellow Sea, just days after conducting two separate weapons tests.
According to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the launches occurred at 7 a.m., but no other details were provided, Yonhap reported.
“While strengthening our monitoring and vigilance, our military has been closely coordinating with the United States to monitor additional signs of North Korea’s provocations,” the JCS said in a statement quoted by Yonhap.
The launch is the first of its kind since September 2023, when Pyongyang launched two long-range strategic cruise missiles armed with fake nuclear warheads at the same location.
The serial launches come just days after Kim Jong-un’s forces launched their first solid-fuel intermediate-range ballistic missile this year, carrying a hypersonic warhead into the East Sea.
Last week, North Korean state outlet KCNA reported that Pyongyang had tested a “underwater nuclear weapon system” in retaliation to US, South Korean, and Japanese joint naval operations.
The drills were “seriously threatening the security” of the North, therefore Pyongyang performed a crucial test of its underwater nuclear weapon system Haeil-5-23, which is being developed in the East Sea of Korea, according to the KCNA.
Pyongyang tested a putative underwater nuclear attack drone three times early last year, boasting that it could unleash a radioactive wave.
Long-tense relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated dramatically in recent months, with both sides abandoning important tension-reduction agreements, increasing frontier security, and conducting live-fire drills along the border.
Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared the South to be his country’s main adversary, dismantled reunification and outreach agencies, and warned war over merely 0.001 mm of territorial incursion.
