More missile launches are highly probable, as the North Korean military is conducting its own summer drills, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The launch came a few hours after US President Donald Trump said he had received a “very beautiful letter” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea has fired a series of missiles and rockets since Kim and Trump agreed at a June 30 meeting to revive stalled denuclearisation talks.
A U.S. official said that at least one projectile was launched and that it appeared to be similar to previous short-range missiles fired by Pyongyang. Two missiles flew about 400 km (250 miles) at a height of about 48 km, according to the South Korean military.
Trump played down the recent North Korean weapons launches when he spoke to reporters earlier on Friday, saying: “I say it again: There have been no nuclear tests. The missile tests have all been short-range. No ballistic missile tests. No long-range missiles.”
Kim has said the weapons tests were a response to US-South Korean military drills being held this month.
North Korea decries such exercises as a rehearsal for war aimed at toppling its leadership.
The projectiles were fired at dawn on Saturday from an area around the northeastern city of Hamhung, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
Large solid-fuel rocket engines for North Korea’s ballistic missile program are most likely being produced at a factory complex in Hamhung, monitoring group 38 North said last year.
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The Blue House, citing a meeting of South Korea’s top security officials, said: “Because of concerns that North Korea’s series of launchescan raise military tensions on the Korean Peninsula, ministers called for North Korea to stop it.”
Kim Dong-yup, a former naval officer who teaches at Seoul’s Kyungnam University, said the weapons tested on Saturday could be related to the completion of North Korea’s new rocket artillery system that required multiple launches of the same kind.
Mr Trump and Kim have met a total of three times, most recently shaking hands in the “Demilitarized Zone” which separates the North and Sout.
The time before that, the President lavished praise on Kim, son of the country’s previous leader Kim Jong-il.
Mr Trump told him: “I think your country has tremendous economic potential – unbelievable, unlimited.
“I think you will have a tremendous future with your country – a great leader.
“And I look forward to watching it happen and helping it to happen.”
It was a sharp contrast to the pair’s war of words in 2017, with Mr Trump referring to Kim as “little rocket man”, while Kim retorted by claiming the billionaire former Apprentice host was a “deranged maniac”.
During the course of that year, Kim ramped up nuclear missile tests and was even rumoured to have tested a hydrogen bomb.