South Korea says North fires around 10 ballistic missiles

SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea fired about 10 unidentified ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan Saturday, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, days after Pyongyang warned of “terrible consequences” over South Korea-US military drills.

Pyongyang recently dashed hopes of a diplomatic thaw with South Korea, Washington’s security ally, describing its latest peace efforts as a “clumsy, deceptive farce”.

Seoul’s military detected “around ten unidentified ballistic missiles launched from the Sunan area in North Korea toward the East Sea at around 1:20 pm (0420 GMT),” the JCS said in a statement.

Japan’s defence ministry also confirmed the launch, saying on its official X account that “what is possibly a ballistic missile was launched from North Korea”.

The announcement came hours after South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok said that US President Donald Trump thinks a meeting with Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un would be “good”.

Washington has for decades led efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme, but summits, sanctions and diplomatic pressure have had little impact.

The Trump administration has pushed in recent months to revive high-level talks with Pyongyang, eyeing a possible summit with Kim Jong Un this year, potentially during Trump’s April visit to Beijing.

Seoul’s Kim, who met Trump in Washington, said the US president told him that meeting Kim Jong Un would be “good” and the meeting could potentially happen during Trump’s visit to Beijing that begins later in March.

Trump said during a trip to Asia in October that he was “100 percent” open to meeting with Kim Jong Un, a remark that went unanswered by the North.

After largely ignoring those overtures for months, Kim Jong Un recently said that the two nations could “get along” if Washington accepted Pyongyang’s nuclear status.

‘Terrible consequences’

Last month, Pyongyang’s leader Kim said North Korea had “absolutely no business dealing with South Korea, its most hostile entity, and will permanently exclude South Korea from the category of compatriots”.

Seoul and Washington kicked off their springtime military drills “Freedom Shield” on Monday, which will involve about 18,000 Korean troops and run until March 19.

The nuclear-armed North has long described such exercises as rehearsals for invasion.

Earlier this week, Kim Yo Jong, a powerful confidante of her brother Kim Jong Un, said the joint drills “may cause unimaginably terrible consequences”.

She went on to say the drills were taking place at “a critical time when global security structure is collapsing rapidly and wars break out in different parts of the world”.

She said the situation is caused by “the reckless acts of the outrageous international rogues”.

Pyongyang has condemned the US-Israeli attack on Iran as an “illegal act of aggression”, saying it shows the “rogue” nature of the United States.