By HYUNG-JIN KIM<\/p>\n
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014\u00a0North Korea<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday performed its second ballistic\u00a0missile test<\/a>\u00a0in less than a week, its neighbors said, a likely protest of the upcoming South Korea-U.S. military drills that North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal.<\/p>\n South Korea\u2019s Joint Chiefs of Staff said a ballistic missile fired from the North\u2019s eastern coastal Wonsan area around 6 a.m. flew more than 700 kilometers (435 miles). The Japanese Defense Ministry also detected the launch, saying the weapon landed in waters outside its exclusive economic zone, between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.<\/p>\n The launches, within days of each other, were seen as part of North Korea\u2019s extended run of weapons tests as the country has refused to return to talks with the U.S. and South Korea for years. Experts say North Korea often uses its rivals\u2019 military training as a pretext to boost its own testing activities.<\/p>\n South Korea\u2019s military said it remains ready to repel any provocation by Pyongyang in cooperation with the United States. South Korea\u2019s national security council called North Korean ballistic missile launches \u201cacts of provocation\u201d and urged the North to halt them immediately.<\/p>\n Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi told reporters that Japan strongly protested the North Korean launch through their embassies in Beijing. \u201cIt\u2019s a serious problem that affects the safety of the Japanese people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The latest launch came two days after South Korea and the United States announced they will kick off their annual large-scale\u00a0military drills<\/a>\u00a0on Aug. 17 to beef up readiness against North Korean threats.<\/p>\n North Korea has previously responded to the Ulchi Freedom Shield training and other major\u00a0South Korea-U.S. military exercises<\/a>\u00a0with provocative weapons tests and harsh rhetoric. The U.S. and South Korea have repeatedly said their training is defensive in nature.<\/p>\n After last year\u2019s Ulchi Freedom Shield training exercises began, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the drills showed the U.S. and South Korea\u2019s \u201cwill to ignite a war\u201d and claimed they have grown more provocative than before, which has prompted North Korea to respond with \u201cproactive and overwhelming\u201d countermeasures.<\/p>\n On Aug. 6, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan detected the launch of a short-range ballistic missile from North Korea in what was the North\u2019s first ballistic weapons testing activity since late June. North Korea didn\u2019t confirm the reported launch, though it usually releases details of weapons tests a day later.<\/p>\n Multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions ban North Korea from launching ballistic missiles. But North Korea has ramped up ballistic and other weapons testing activities to expand its nuclear and missile arsenals since Kim\u2019s\u00a0high-stakes diplomacy<\/a>\u00a0with U.S. President Donald Trump fell apart in 2019. Experts say Kim likely hopes to use his enlarged arsenals to wrest concessions from the U.S., such as relaxing international economic sanctions on the North.<\/p>\n In recent years, Kim has boosted his diplomatic footprint by strengthening cooperation with Russia by supplying troops and ammunition to support its war against Ukraine. He\u2019s also recently taken steps to bolster ties with China, the country\u2019s traditional ally and economic pipeline. Chinese President\u00a0Xi Jinping<\/a>\u00a0visited the North Korean capital Pyongyang in June for the first time in seven years.<\/p>\n Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By HYUNG-JIN KIM SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014\u00a0North Korea\u00a0on Wednesday performed its second ballistic\u00a0missile test\u00a0in less than a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[56858,31,34,33],"class_list":["post-117928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-ballistic-missile-launch","tag-korea","tag-north-korea","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}