North Korea launches ballistic missile off its east coast, South Korea says

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched a ballistic missile off its eastern coast Monday, the South Korean military said, a day after the North promised “offensive and overwhelming” responses to protest a new American military exercise with South Korea and Japan. .

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launch took place Monday morning but gave no other details, including how far the weapon traveled.

The launch came two days after South Korea, the United States and Japan ended their new multi-domain trilateral exercises. The “Freedom Edge” exercise attracted a US aircraft carrier and destroyers, warplanes and helicopters from the three countries, and the three countries practiced anti-missile defense, anti-submarine and interdiction exercises maritime.

On Sunday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry issued a lengthy statement strongly denouncing the United States, South Korea and Japan for their three-way exercise. He called the exercise the Asian version of NATO that openly destroyed the security environment on the Korean Peninsula and contained the United States' intention to exert pressure on Russia and besiege China.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry said it would “firmly defend state sovereignty, security and interests as well as regional peace through aggressive and overwhelming countermeasures.”

Monday's shooting was the North's first weapons firing in five days. Last Wednesday, North Korea launched what it called a multi-warhead missile in the first known launch of an advanced developmental weapon intended to defeat U.S. and South Korean missile defenses. North Korea said the launch was a success, but South Korea rejected the claim, calling it a deception intended to cover up a failed launch.

In recent weeks, North Korea has launched numerous balloons carrying trash toward South Korea in what it has described as a tit-for-tat response to South Korean activists sending political leaflets via their own balloons.

Meanwhile, North Korea opened a key ruling party meeting on Friday to determine what it called “important and immediate issues” related to work to further strengthen Korean-style socialism. During the second day of the meeting on Saturday, leader Kim Jong Un spoke of “some deviations hindering” the country's efforts to improve its economic situation and unspecified important tasks to resolve immediate political problems, media reported Sunday North Korean states.

Hyung-jin Kim, Associated Press