North Korea fired two short-range missiles into the sea early on Thursday from its eastern coast, in a sign of its growing impatience with the lack of progress in talks with Washington over its nuclear weapons programme, The Telegraph reports.
The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles that were fired from near the eastern coastal town of Wonsan flew about 270 miles before landing in the waters off the country's east coast.
A South Korean defence official told AP that an initial South Korean analysis showed both missiles were fired from mobile launchers and flew at a maximum altitude of 30 miles.
Some analysts speculated that it could be the test of a KN-23, a “quasi ballistic missile.”
A senior US official said the Trump administration was aware of the reports of a short-range projectile launched from North Korea. The official said the administration had no further comment at this time.
South Korean Defence Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyunsoo urged Pyongyang to stop acts that are "not helpful to efforts to ease military tensions on the Korean Peninsula."
If North Korea fired ballistic missiles, it could have ramifications because UN Security Council resolutions ban the North from engaging in any launch using ballistic technology. Still, the UN Security Council has typically imposed fresh sanctions on North Korea only when it conducted long-range ballistic missile tests.
"If they were ballistic missiles, they violate the UN sanctions, and I find it extremely regrettable," Japan's Defence Minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters in Tokyo.
The launch was the first weapons test since Donald Trump, the US president, took a historic few steps into North Korea at its heavily armed border with the South in Panmunjom late last month, and indicates that the unprecedented gesture did not win much capital with Pyongyang.
