South Korea’s military says North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile toward the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on Sunday.
“Our armed forces detected a short-range ballistic missile launched from the Pyongyang region towards the East Sea around 10:38 p.m. today (8:38 a.m. Quebec time),” the state said. Joint Major of South Korea.
The missile traveled 570 kilometers before landing in the East Sea, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which said Seoul, Washington and Tokyo “closely shared information relating to the North Korean ballistic missile.”
Japan’s Defense Ministry also said North Korea had launched “what appears to be a ballistic missile.”
According to Kyodo News, citing unnamed Japanese government sources, the short-range missile fell outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
The test comes as Seoul and Washington have warned Pyongyang that any nuclear attack against the United States and South Korea would bring about the end of North Korean rule.
The two allies participated in the second session of the Nuclear Advisory Group in Washington on Friday, focused on nuclear deterrence in the event of conflict with the North.
On Sunday, a spokesperson for the North Korean Defense Ministry denounced a plan by the allies to add a nuclear exercise next year to their annual joint military exercises, threatening a “preventive and deadly counterattack” .
“This is an open statement on nuclear confrontation aimed at making the use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK a fait accompli,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the official North Korean News Agency. Korean KCNA.
The DPRK or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.
Sunday’s missile launch comes on the death anniversary of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, who died on Dec. 17, 2011.
Last year, North Korea announced a new doctrine making its status as a nuclear power “irreversible”, and authorizing it to carry out a preventive atomic strike in the event of an existential threat against its regime.
In September, its status as a nuclear state was further enshrined in its Constitution.
In November, North Korea succeeded in putting a military spy satellite into orbit, capable, according to it, of already providing images of American and South Korean military sites.