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North Korea has fired several cruise missiles towards the sea to the west of the Korean Peninsula marking the second missile launch in apparent protest over the arrival of a nuclear-armed United States submarine at a South Korean port.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Saturday the launches were detected beginning at about 4am local time.
“Our military has bolstered surveillance and vigilance while closely cooperating with the United States and maintaining a firm readiness posture,” the JCS said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, reports Al Jazeera.
Earlier on Wednesday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles from an area near its capital, Pyongyang. They flew about 550km before landing in waters east of the Korean Peninsula.
The flight distance of those missiles roughly matched the distance between Pyongyang and the South Korean port city of Busan, where the nuclear-armed submarine, the USS Kentucky, made the first visit by a US nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea since the 1980s.
Bd-pratidin English/Golam Rosul
