North Korea is once again flexing its muscles with an unannounced missile launch, but this time in direct response to military drills being conducted by South Korea and the United States.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff on Thursday said that the north launched two short-range missiles into the sea, which both traveled some 480 miles from the capital region. The missiles fell into the water somewhere between Japan and the Korean peninsula.
Washington and Seoul have at this point been engaged in multiple rounds of joint military drills which have stretched back a couple months.
The exercises this week are the fifth such round of drills, conducted not far from the border between the two Koreas, which Pyongyang slammed as "provocative and irresponsible".
Given the missile launch came directly after Thursday's drills were initiated, Pyongyang's actions were clearly a direct response to the US drills:
"Our army strongly denounces the provocative and irresponsible moves of the puppet military authorities escalating the military tension in the region despite its repeated warnings, and warns them solemnly," a spokesperson for the North Korean Defense Ministry said in a statement published by North Korea state media KCNA.
The statement added: "Our armed forces will fully counter any form of demonstrative moves and provocation of the enemies."
Japanese and US officials issued a joint statement condemning the new launches. "These launches are clear violations of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, and demonstrate the threat the DPRK’s unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs pose to the region, international peace and security, and the global non-proliferation regime," the joint statement said.
Lately the US and Japan have been deepening their military ties to the degree that they are now in discussions over a US nuclear umbrella if Japan ever comes under existential threat.
It was also widely reported in April that the US was sending nuclear-armed submarines to dock in South Korea for the first time in four decades.
