Overview
- South Korea’s military, which reported the launches Sunday morning, tracked several short-range ballistic missiles fired from the Sinpo area toward the East Sea.
- The projectiles flew about 140 kilometers and likely fell into the sea near Korea’s east coast, according to assessments from Seoul and Japan.
- South Korea raised its alert level, strengthened surveillance, and convened a crisis meeting, and it is working with the United States to analyze the data and maintain a firm joint defense posture.
- The launches are the seventh ballistic test this year and the fourth in April, in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions that ban North Korean ballistic missile tests.
- Sinpo hosts facilities linked to submarine-launched missiles, which are harder to detect than land launches, underscoring a push to grow North Korea’s naval strike capability after Kim Jong Un oversaw a mid-April ship-launched cruise missile test.