South Korea’s army said it fired three air-to-ground missiles north of its maritime border on Wednesday in response to the firing of at least 10 missiles by North Korea earlier in the day, including one that landed less than 60 kilometers off the coast of South Korea.
The country has closed some sea routes off the east coast of the Korean peninsula.
This was the first time an apparent test had crashed near South Korean waters, prompting air strike warnings, officials said.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said at least one of the missiles landed 26 kilometers south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed inter-Korean maritime border. The missile landed 57 kilometers from the South Korean east coast town of Sokcho and 167 kilometers from Ulleung, where air strike warnings were issued.
“We heard the siren around 8:55 am and all of us in the building went down to the basement evacuation site,” an Ulleung County official told Reuters. “We stayed there until we got up there around 9:15 am, after hearing that the projectile had landed on the high seas.”
The launches came just hours after Pyongyang demanded the United States and South Korea halt large-scale military exercises, saying “such provocation and military recklessness can no longer be tolerated.”
A spokesman for the South Korean military said officials were analyzing the launches to see if the missile’s flight paths were intentional or if one of them went off course.
Source: CNN Brasil
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