Seoul (AFP) – North Korea has fired several short-range ballistic missiles, Seoul’s military said on Thursday, hours after US President Donald Trump said he would meet Pyongyang’s Kim Jong Un this year. The latest launches from the nuclear-armed North come as South Korea and the United States hold a shorter edition of their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises, following an order from Trump to scale them back. Pyongyang has long condemned US-South Korea joint exercises as rehearsals for invasion, often staging missile launches around the drills.
Trump, seeking to revive the bond he claims to have forged with Kim in his first term, told reporters at the White House on Wednesday he plans to meet the North Korean leader later this year. The US president also said it was important to “get along” with Kim, adding that Pyongyang now had 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons. Seoul says there are around 80-120.
Hours after Trump’s remarks, an official from Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told AFP that the North fired “around 10 short-range ballistic missiles” from the Pyongyang area. Japan earlier said a suspected “ballistic missile launched by North Korea a short while ago has already fallen,” according to an X post from the prime minister’s office.
Trump’s sudden focus on Kim and his scaling back of joint US-South Korean military drills have alarmed Asian allies, while sparking speculation that he was seeking a foreign policy win as the Iran war stalls. Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of the North Korean leader, said on Wednesday that her brother had “good memories and feelings” about Trump and that the relationship between the two leaders remains “excellent.” She said, however, that she was unaware of any current communication between the two leaders.
Her statement came hours after Seoul announced the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises would end on Friday — about a week earlier than planned — “at the suggestion of the US side.” The Pentagon said the reduced drills would cause “no degradation to US training objectives.” The exercises are designed to prepare for a possible attack by North Korea.
The United States stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea to bolster the country’s defenses, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. South Korea’s Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said Seoul remained opposed to officially recognizing the North as a nuclear-weapon state. Asked whether Washington had “given up” on North Korea’s denuclearization, Ahn said he did not believe so.
President Lee Jae Myung — who has long pushed for stronger homegrown defenses to reduce South Korea’s reliance on the United States — said on Wednesday he would “do his utmost” to support Trump’s peacemaking efforts with the North.
© 2024 AFP
