In this photo provided by the North Korean government, leader Kim Jong Un delivers a speech in Pyongyang on Sept. 9, 2024, marking the country’s 76th founding anniversary. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles into the sea east of the Korean Peninsula on Thursday, according to South Korea’s military.

The missiles launched around 7:10 a.m. from the area around Pyongyang and continued toward the East Sea, or Sea of Japan, according to a statement from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff just before 9 a.m.

At least two missiles flew over 220 miles and reached a peak altitude of 62 miles before falling into the sea, according to a joint news release by the Japanese Ministry of Defense and Cabinet Secretariat.

Both nations’ militaries tracked and monitored the missile flights and shared the information with the U.S., according to the respective news releases. Data from the flights were being analyzed, according to the South Korean joint chiefs.

South Korea’s military “strongly condemns North Korea’s missile launch as a clear provocative act that seriously threatens peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” the joint chiefs stated.

Japan protested to North Korea, also strongly condemning its actions, according to its release.

“The series of actions by North Korea, including the repeated launches of ballistic missiles, threaten the peace and security of Japan, the region and the international community,” the Defense Ministry said in the release.

A representative of South Korea’s office for North Korean Nuclear Affairs conferred by phone with Seth Bailey, the U.S. deputy special representative for the North Korea, and Akihiro Okochi, of Japan’s Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, following Thursday’s launches, a spokesman for the South Korean Ministry of Unification said by phone Thursday.

“The three countries condemned the North’s ballistic missile launch as a clear violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and a grave threat to the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and the international community,” the spokesman said.

Some South Korean government officials speak to the media on a customary condition of anonymity.

The Japanese government put out an alert at 7:17 a.m. on X that North Korea had launched what they suspected was a ballistic missile. It also provided information to aircraft and ships traveling in the vicinity but has received no reports of damage from the missiles’ re-entry.

These ballistic missile launches “are a serious issue concerning the safety of the Japanese citizens,” the Defense Ministry said in its statement.

The launch, the North’s first weapons firing in more than two months, came three days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to redouble efforts to make his nuclear force fully ready for combat with the United States and its allies.

Kim made the pledge saying North Korea faces “a grave threat” because of what he called “the reckless expansion” of a U.S.-led regional military bloc that is now developing into a nuclear-based one.

Last week, North Korea also resumed launches of trash-carrying balloons toward South Korea.

Since 2022, North Korea has significantly accelerated its weapons testing activities in a bid to perfect its capabilities to launch strikes on the U.S. and South Korea. The U.S. and South Korea have responded by expanding military drills that North Korea calls invasion rehearsals.

Prior to Thursday, North Korea this year had launched nearly 40 ballistic missiles in eight separate days of testing, according to the South’s Ministry of National Defense.

Pyongyang last fired two ballistic missiles, one of them a short-range variant, off its eastern coast on July 1. The second, unidentified missile flew about 75 miles eastward in an abnormal flight trajectory before the South Korean military lost track of it, the joint chiefs said at the time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.