By Joyce Lee and Kyu-seok Shim
SEOUL, Aug 20 (Reuters) – South Korea’s presidential office condemned North Korea’s launch of more than 10 short-range ballistic missiles on Thursday and ordered its military to maintain full readiness during ongoing joint exercises with the United States.
The presidential office convened an emergency security meeting attended by officials from the defence ministry and military authorities after North Korea fired the missiles from the Pyongyang area toward the sea to the east of the Korean Peninsula, it said in a statement.
“The ballistic missile launch is a grave act that violates U.N. Security Council resolutions,” it said, calling on North Korea to immediately halt such actions.
Officials reviewed South Korea’s response posture, assessed the security implications of the launches and discussed necessary measures, the office said.
The missiles flew around 300 kilometres (186 miles) toward the sea, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Japan’s government and coastguard also said North Korea appeared to have fired a ballistic missile towards the sea. Japan’s coast guard said the projectile had already fallen.
The missile appeared to have landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the sea, NHK reported.
The launch comes as military drills by South Korea and the U.S. were cut short to end on Friday after President Donald Trump ordered a substantial reduction in U.S. participation and said he wanted to revive diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, sister of Kim Jong Un, said on Wednesday the United States’ “hostile policy” towards North Korea had not changed, as the drills were still going on.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said the launch appeared aimed at underscoring that Kim Yo Jong’s warning a day earlier was “not mere rhetoric.”
He said the launch likely served multiple purposes, including signalling opposition to the South Korea-U.S. military exercises, expressing displeasure over recent discussion of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, and warning outside powers against speculation about Pyongyang’s security affairs.
“It is a message that matters concerning North Korea’s security are for North Korea to decide,” Yang said, adding the launch could also have been used to test improved missile systems.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who visited Seoul this week, urged South Korea not to take sides between Beijing and Washington, saying the U.S. should abandon its “hostile” policy toward North Korea to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
(Reporting by Heejin Kim, Kyuseok Shim and Joyce Lee in Seoul, and Kaori Kaneko in TokyoEditing by Ed Davies)
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