North Korea fires unidentified projectile towards sea off east coast, Seoul says
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SEOUL – North Korea fired a ballistic missile towards the sea off its east coast on Oct 3, South Korea and Japan said.
The missile was launched from the Wonsan area at around 6:30am local time, Friday), the South Korean military said in a statement. It did not elaborate on how far the missile flew.
Japan’s coast guard, in an e-mailed statement citing the Japanese defence ministry, said the object may have been a ballistic missile and appeared to have come down, warning ships to take precautions.
South Korea’s military said it has raised its monitoring of any further missile tests and will share intelligence with the US and Japan.
The South Korean presidential office’s national security council convened an emergency meeting on Oct 3 to assess the situation after the missile launch, the office said in a statement.
The launch came after Pyongyang’s Kim Yo Jong, powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, issued a statement on Oct 2 that dismissed Seoul’s demand for an apology for North Korean mines that seriously wounded South Korean soldiers in the Demilitarised Zone, a heavily fortified area between the two Koreas.
South Korea said this week North Korean mines caused the blast that seriously injured two South Korean soldiers on a reconnaissance mission inside the 4-km-wide border that stretches across the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea has sharply ramped up hostility against the South in recent years, disavowing unification as a national goal and calling South Korea its “primary foe”. REUTERS