North Korea fires around 10 short-range ballistic missiles into East Sea: JCS

Citizens watch a news report on North Korea firing around 10 short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea at Seoul Station in central Seoul on Thursday morning. [NEWS1]

North Korea fired around 10 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) into the East Sea on Thursday morning, a day after flying hundreds of feces-filled balloons across the border to South Korea.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) announced Thursday that the SRBM launches were fired from Pyongyang’s Sunan area at around 6:14 a.m. the same day. The missiles flew about 350 kilometers (217 miles) before landing in the East Sea.

Judging by the flight distance, the missiles are presumed to be super-large multiple rocket launchers (KN-25). Large cities such as Seoul and Daejeon are within 350 km of Pyongyang, as well as major air force bases such as Cheongju, Suwon, Wonju and Seosan.

Although North Korea has continued to engage in ballistic missile provocation under the pretext of test launches, it is unusual that a launch involving such a large number of missiles took place.

“We strongly condemn North Korea’s missile launch as an act of provocation that seriously threatens the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula,” the JCS said. “Our military has strengthened monitoring and vigilance against additional launches, while closely sharing information related to North Korean ballistic missiles with the United States and Japanese authorities.

"The military will closely monitor North Korea’s various activities under a solid South Korea-U.S. joint defense posture and will respond overwhelmingly to any provocation,” the JCS added. “We will maintain our full military capabilities and posture."

North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch came 13 days after a short-range missile flew 300 kilometers on May 17, and three days after a failed spy satellite launch on Monday.

Shortly after the SRBM launches, South Korea's military detected North Korea's global positioning system (GPS) jamming signals from around 7:50 a.m. in the area north of the Northern Limit Line (NLL). The JCS said that there were no restrictions on military operations due to the GPS jamming.

Seoul's Foreign Ministry announced Thursday that South Korea, the United States and Japan's representatives for North Korean policy discussed ways to cooperate in response to North Korea's short-range ballistic missile launch.

Lee Joon-il, director of the Korean Peninsula Policy Bureau, had a three-way telephone consultation with Jung Pak, a senior official on North Korea at the U.S. State Department, and Hamamoto Yukiya, deputy director-general of Japan's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, on Thursday, and shared his assessment of North Korea's ballistic missile launch.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]