North Korea Fires Ballistic Missile Toward Sea: South Korean Military

A North Korean flag at the village of Gijungdong, North Korea, on Oct. 4, 2022. Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images

North Korea has fired a short-range ballistic missile off its east coast, according to the South Korean military on Nov. 17, marking the first missile firing in just over a week.

The statement from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected Pyongyang’s launch from the Wonsan area in Kangwon Province at 10:48 a.m. It didn’t provide further details.

“While strengthening our monitoring and vigilance, our military is maintaining a full readiness posture in close cooperation with the United States,” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in the statement, per Yonhap News Agency.

It was the first launch in eight days; Pyongyang last fired a short-range ballistic missile into the East Sea on Nov. 9. It’s also the latest in its series of missile tests in recent months.

The latest launch comes just hours after North Korea threatened to launch “fiercer” military actions toward the United States if Washington opts to continue with its security commitment to help defend its allies in the region.

North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui warned on Nov. 17 prior to the missile launch that a recent U.S.–South Korea–Japan summit accord on the North would leave tensions on the Korean Peninsula “more unpredictable.”

The statement marked North Korea’s first formal response to the trilateral meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol, which was held on Nov. 13 in Cambodia.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol (L) speaks during a trilateral meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden (C) and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (R) on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit during the 40th and 41st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summits in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Nov. 13, 2022. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

During a separate meeting with Kishida on the same day, Biden “reaffirmed the U.S. extended deterrence commitment to [South Korea] using the full range of U.S. defense capabilities, including nuclear, conventional, and missile defense capabilities and emphasized the U.S. commitment to identify additional steps to further reinforce deterrence in the face of [North Korea’s] nuclear threats,” according to a statement from the White House.

Yoon noted on Nov. 13 that since he took office in May, North Korea has launched about 50 missiles, with “intensive” missile firing from the end of October.

One of these missiles, Yoon pointed out, crossed the maritime border and landed in South Korean territorial waters for the first time since the maritime boundary—the Northern Limit Line—was drawn by the U.N. Command at the end of the 1950–53 Korean War. He called it an “extremely serious provocation” by Pyongyang.

Those missiles came amid joint drills between U.S., South Korean, and Japanese troops. Those drills involved a U.S. aircraft carrier and U.S. B-1B supersonic bombers for the first time since 2017.

Two U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers, top center; four South Korean Air Force F-35 fighter jets; and four U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets fly over South Korea Peninsula during a joint air drill called "Vigilant Storm," in South Korea on Nov. 5, 2022. South Korean Defense Ministry via AP

In the past several years, annual military training between Seoul and Washington had been scaled back or canceled, in part to support now-dormant diplomacy with North Korea and guard against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.