This photo provided Sunday, June 29, 2024, by the North Korean government, shows North Korean leaders Kim Jong Un attending a ruling party’s meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea Friday, June 28. (Korean Central News Agency, Korea News Service/AP)
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s military is trying to determine whether another North Korean ballistic missile, one of two launched early Monday, exploded in midflight, according to the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile from Jangyon county in South Hwanghae province, about 65 miles southwest of Pyongyang, at around 5:05 a.m. Monday, according to a Joint Chiefs’ text message the same day.
“We strongly condemn North Korea’s apparent provocation that seriously threatens peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” the Joint Chiefs said.
The short-range ballistic missile flew roughly 370 miles northeast, the Joint Chiefs said. No details were provided on where the missile landed.
North Korea routinely fires missiles eastward that fall into the Sea of Japan, or East Sea.
Ten minutes after the first missile, North Korea fired another unspecified type of ballistic missile from the same county that flew about 75 miles eastward, according to the Joint Chiefs.
The South Korean military is still analyzing the second missile and trying to determine whether it exploded in mid-air after an abnormal flight, the Joint Chiefs said.
The military was not ruling out other scenarios, including whether the missile landed within North Korea’s borders, a South Korean Ministry of National Defense spokesman said in a separate text message to reporters on the customary condition of anonymity.
Details of the missiles are being shared with the United States and Japan’s military, the Joint Chiefs said.
North Korea has fired over a dozen ballistic missiles in eight separate days of testing so far this year. The communist regime claimed it last fired an intermediate-range, solid-fueled ballistic missile with several independently targetable warheads Wednesday, according to its state-run Korean Central News Agency.
KCNA’s report said the test was successful; however, South Korea’s military said the missile failed and exploded in mid-air.
The tests follow the first large-scale trilateral exercise between the U.S., South Korea and Japan. The three-day Freedom Edge exercise, which included air and naval drills, concluded Saturday, according to The Associated Press.
The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and destroyers USS Halsey and USS Daniel Inouye participated in the maritime portion of the drill with two South Korean and two Japanese destroyers Thursday.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry in a statement through KCNA on Sunday likened the trilateral military cooperation as an “Asian-version of NATO” and warned of unspecified “fatal consequences.”
“[North Korea] will never overlook the moves of the U.S. and its followers to strengthen the military bloc, which openly destroys the security environment on the Korean Peninsula,” the ministry’s statement said.
