North Korea launches projectiles again, for the sixth time this month

North Korea is believed to have fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward the Sea of ​​Japan, east of the Korean Peninsula. This is what the South Korean military says, according to Yonhap News Agency.

This is the sixth time since the beginning of the year that Pyongyang has conducted missile tests. The country says the tests are necessary to defend itself, but it is believed to want to put pressure on the stalled negotiations with South Korea and the United States.

South Korea’s military command said the test was conducted around 8 a.m. local time in and around the city of Hamhung, on North Korea’s east coast. The missiles covered a distance of 190 km and reached a height of 20 km. “Our military is closely monitoring North Korea’s movements and is on alert,” the army chief said.

According to Japanese media, it appears that the projectiles ended up outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

missile test series

On Tuesday, the communist regime conducted a missile test. It is believed that it included two cruise missiles. North Korea has also claimed to have previously tested hypersonic missiles, which travel five times the speed of sound and hardly need to leave the atmosphere. South Korea has disputed this claim.

The United States and Japan condemned the series of missile tests. The United States recently imposed additional sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s regime and on Russian individuals suspected of supporting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The United States also called on the UN Security Council to impose new sanctions.

North Korea has stopped testing ICBMs and nuclear weapons since 2017, but after a failed nuclear summit with the United States in 2019, the country began testing short-range missiles again.