(Seoul) Pyongyang launched two cruise missiles from a submarine on Sunday, announced the North Korean agency KCNA, a few hours from joint military exercises between Seoul and Washington.
The shooting took place off the coastal town of Sinpo (eastern North Korea) on Sunday morning, according to KCNA.
The South Korean army, quoted by the Yonhap news agency, said it detected the launch of a single unspecified missile, without giving details.
KCNA says the exercise was successful, with the missiles hitting their designated and unspecified targets off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula.
This launch took place a few hours before the launch of the most important joint maneuvers between South Korea and the United States for five years.
Pyongyang, which has nuclear weapons, had warned that such exercises could be considered a “declaration of war”.
KCNA pointed out that Sunday’s firing expressed North Korea’s “steadfast position” in the face of a situation in which “US imperialists and South Korean puppet forces are advancing less and less covertly in their military maneuvers against the DPRK”, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
According to KCNA, the test firing also made it possible to “verify the current operational posture of nuclear deterrents in different spaces”.
In a separate statement, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said the United States was “conspiring” to convene a UN Security Council meeting on human rights in North Korea.
On Thursday, Pyongyang had already fired a short-range ballistic missile towards the sea off its west coast, according to the South Korean military.
Washington and Seoul have strengthened their defense cooperation in the face of growing military and nuclear threats from North Korea, which has increased weapons tests in recent months.
“Freedom Shield” training between US and South Korean forces, which begins Monday for at least ten days, will focus on “the changing security environment” due to the redoubled aggressiveness of North Korea, the allies said.
Pyongyang sees these exercises as dress rehearsals for an invasion of its territory or an overthrow of its regime, while justifying its own nuclear and ballistic weapons programs by the need to defend itself.
On Friday, the state-run KCNA reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had ordered his army to step up military maneuvers for “real war”.
In 2022, the North called its status as a nuclear power “irreversible” and conducted a series of ballistic tests in violation of UN resolutions.
“Pyongyang has military capabilities under development that it wants to test anyway and likes to use cooperation from Washington and Seoul as an excuse,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.