North Korea fires 2 ballistic short-range missiles, officials in South Korea say

by Thomas Cronenberg & Dirk Godder
| March 20, 2020 11:42 PM

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired two ballistic short-range missiles toward the East Sea on Saturday, the South Korean military's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) confirmed in Seoul.

The JCS said that two presumed short-range ballistic missiles flew over the country on Saturday after their successive launch in the west of North Korea and then plunged into the water off its eastern coast.

They flew about 250 miles at an altitude of up to 30 miles, according to the JCS.

Pyongyang previously launched projectiles on March 2 and 9.

The launches mark a return to missile testing for North Korea after a three-month pause.

South Korea's military leadership called the actions "very inappropriate" and urged North Korea to stop its military actions "immediately."

The rogue nuclear nation is banned from testing ballistic missiles by UN resolutions, and has been slapped with tough international sanctions to deter it from continuing to develop rockets that could be equipped with nuclear warheads.

Global concerns over North Korea intensified late in 2019 after Pyongyang imposed a year-end deadline for the United States to offer sanctions relief and threatened to send a "Christmas gift," widely interpreted to mean a weapons test, if their demands were not met.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un said the world would see a "new strategic weapon" from the country in the near future, in a message on Jan. 1.

The Trump administration is demanding that North Korea give up all its nuclear weapons and production facilities in exchange for the lifting of crippling sanctions.

Trump famously said in 2018 that he and Kim "fell in love" and that the North Korean letter wrote him "beautiful letters."

But after two high-profile one-on-one summits and a meeting last year on the Demilitarized Zone, relations have soured with the nuclear talks near-frozen and Pyongyang once again referring to Trump as a "dotard," among other insults.

Relations between North and South Korea which had warmed significantly in the run-up to the two summits between Trump and Kim, have also cooled again recently.

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