North Korea launches ballistic missile off its east coast, South Korea says

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired a ballistic missile off its east coast Monday, the South Korean military said, a day after the North vowed “offensive and overwhelming” responses to protest the of a new American military exercise with South Korea and Japan.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launch was made Monday morning, but gave no other details, including how far the weapon traveled.

The launch came two days after South Korea, the US and Japan concluded their new multi-domain trilateral exercises. The “Freedom Edge” exercise attracted a US aircraft carrier and destroyers, fighter jets and helicopters from the three countries, and the three countries practiced anti-missile defense, anti-submarine and maritime interdiction exercises.

On Sunday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued a lengthy statement strongly denouncing the US, South Korea and Japan for their three-way exercise. He called the exercise an Asian version of NATO that openly destroys the security environment on the Korean Peninsula and contained the US intention to put pressure on Russia and besiege China.

The North’s foreign ministry said it would “resolutely defend the sovereignty, security and interests of the state and peace in the region through offensive and overwhelming countermeasures.”

Monday’s launch was the North’s first weapons fire in five days. Last Wednesday, North Korea launched what it called a multiple-warhead missile in the first known launch of an advanced, developmental weapon designed to defeat US and South Korean missile defenses. North Korea said the launch was successful, but South Korea dismissed the North’s claim as a hoax to cover up a failed launch.

In recent weeks, North Korea has floated numerous balloons carrying garbage toward South Korea, in what it has described as a backlash against South Korean activists sending political leaflets in their own balloons.

Meanwhile, North Korea opened a key meeting of its ruling party on Friday to determine what it called “important, immediate issues” related to work to consolidate Korean-style socialism. In the second session of the meeting on Saturday, leader Kim Jong Un spoke of “some deviations that obstruct” the county’s efforts to improve its economic status and unspecified important tasks for solving immediate policy issues, state media reported on Sunday from North Korea.

Hyung-jin Kim, The Associated Press