North Korea has fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean off its east coast, military officials in South Korea and Japan said, the latest in an unprecedented flurry of launches this month.
Two "short-range projectiles" were launched from the coastal Wonsan area, and flew 230 kilometres at a maximum altitude of 30 kilometres, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff reported.
Japan's Ministry of Defence said they appeared to be ballistic missiles, and they did not land in Japanese territory or its exclusive economic zone.
They would be the eighth and ninth missiles launched in four rounds of tests this month as North Korean troops conduct ongoing military drills, usually personally overseen by leader Kim Jong Un.
That would be the most missiles ever fired in a single month by North Korea, according to a tally by Shea Cotton, senior researcher at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies.
"Coming this early in the year, the only time we've seen tests this frequently were in 2016 and 2017, both of which were huge years for North Korea's missile program," he said in a post on Twitter.
United Nations Security Council resolutions bar North Korea from testing ballistic missiles, and the country has been heavily sanctioned over its missile and nuclear weapons programs.
Denuclearisation talks with the US have stalled, and this year's string of tests and military drills appear aimed at underscoring North Korea's return to a more hard-line policy, said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists.
This month's military drills have been conducted despite a border lockdown and quarantine measures imposed in North Korea in an effort to prevent an outbreak of coronavirus.
The politically and economically isolated country has not reported any confirmed cases, though some foreign experts have raised doubts over that.
Australian Associated Press
