SEOUL, South Korea\u00a0\u2014\u00a0North Korea launched a barrage of ballistic missiles toward the sea on Thursday, South Korea\u2019s military said, a day after the North shrugged off a U.S. decision to scale back military drills with South Korea in an apparent bid to resume diplomacy.<\/p>\n
The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches of about 10 short-range ballistic missiles happened from North Korea\u2019s capital region around 5 p.m. Thursday. The military said the missiles flew about 185 miles each toward North Korea\u2019s eastern waters.<\/p>\n
The military said South Korea has bolstered its surveillance posture and was closely coordinating information on the launches with the U.S. and Japan. South Korea\u2019s presidential national security council issued a statement urging North Korea to halt ballistic missile launches.<\/p>\n
The Japanese prime minister\u2019s office had earlier said that it detected a suspected missile launch.<\/p>\n
President Trump earlier ordered the Pentagon to \u201csubstantially reduce\u201d the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, just before they began Monday. Trump cited what he said was a good relationship with Kim and South Korea\u2019s refusal to support him over the war in Iran.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the South Korean and U.S. militaries confirmed they shortened the 11-day drills by shortening their duration by about half and canceling some field training exercises. The reduction of the exercises raised worries about the allies\u2019 joint defense posture.<\/p>\n
Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, dismissed Trump\u2019s overture later Wednesday, saying \u201cthe provocative, aggressive nature of the drills won\u2019t change even though their duration and size were reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the U.S. calculates that it can propagate its recent measure as the one of so-called good faith, they will not get the desired answer,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n
She denied Trump\u2019s claim that Kim Jong Un had responded to his request for a conversation. <\/p>\n
Kim Yo Jong still refrained from the typical North Korean reaction of fiery rhetoric and said personal relations between her brother and Trump are \u201cstill excellent.\u201d That signals North Korea would want to wait for Trump to make bigger concessions before returning to talks.<\/p>\n
When asked by reporters Wednesday if he would be meeting with Kim Jong Un this year, Trump said that \u201cYeah, I will be.\u201d He wouldn\u2019t answer a question about whether he is exchanging letters with Kim but said he gets along with him.<\/p>\n
The Ulchi Freedom Shield is one of the main military exercises conducted by the U.S. and South Korea annually to enhance their ability to cope with potential North Korean aggression. Washington and Seoul say their drills are defensive in nature, but North Korea calls them an invasion rehearsal and often reacts with weapons tests.<\/p>\n
Before this month\u2019s drills started, North Korea accused the U.S. and South Korea of plotting more provocative exercises this summer and vowed to respond with \u201ca new level of a deterrent.\u201d Days before the drills\u2019 start, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea in its first such launches since late June.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s earlier diplomacy with Kim Jong Un collapsed in 2019 due to disputes over how much sanctions relief North Korea should be given in return for dismantling its main nuclear complex, a limited denuclearization step. Kim has since shunned any talks with the U.S., pushed to modernize weapons arsenals and expanded cooperation with Russia.<\/p>\n
Kim has said he won\u2019t place his nuclear program back on the negotiating table. Experts say Kim has more leverage than when he first held talks with Trump in 2018 and 2019. They say Kim likely hopes to eventually win international recognition as a nuclear state and extensive sanctions relief in exchange for only limited steps toward denuclearization.<\/p>\n
Kim writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, South Korea\u00a0\u2014\u00a0North Korea launched a barrage of ballistic missiles toward the sea on Thursday, South Korea\u2019s military…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19756,517,58284,1516,2371,31,20169,65159,59159,34,65157,16874,33,32388,1722,65158,5222],"class_list":["post-126802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-ballistic-missile","tag-diplomacy","tag-exercise","tag-kim","tag-kim-yo-jong","tag-korea","tag-launch","tag-limited-denuclearization-step","tag-military-drill","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korea-fire-barrage","tag-sea","tag-south-korea","tag-talk","tag-trump","tag-u-s-decision","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126802","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=126802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}