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

By HYUNG-JIN KIM

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched a ballistic missile off its east coast Monday, the South Korean military said, a day after the North vowed “offensive and overwhelming” responses to protest a new U.S. 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 wrapped up their new trilateral multi-domain exercises. The “Freedom Edge” exercise drew a U.S. aircraft carrier and destroyers, fighter jets and helicopters from the three countries, and the three countries practiced missile defense, anti-submarine and maritime interdiction drills.

On Sunday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry issued a lengthy statement strongly denouncing the joint exercises between the United States, South Korea and Japan. It called the exercises an Asian version of NATO that openly destroys the security environment on the Korean Peninsula and signals 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 peace in the region through offensive and overwhelming countermeasures.”

Monday’s launch was the North’s first weapons test in five days. Last Wednesday, North Korea fired what it called a multiple-warhead missile in the first known launch of an advanced weapon designed to defeat U.S. and South Korean missile defenses. North Korea said the launch was successful, but South Korea dismissed the claim as 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 Friday to determine what it called “important and immediate issues” related to work to further strengthen socialism with Korean characteristics. During the second day of the meeting Saturday, leader Kim Jong-un discussed “some deviations hindering” the country's efforts to improve its economic situation and unspecified major tasks to resolve immediate political problems, North Korean state media reported Sunday.