North Korea fired three missiles east Thursday morning, the Japanese government said, adding that one of them may have been an ICBM. over the main island of Honshu, but later corrected the announcement and said the projectile had disappeared from radar over the Sea of Japan.
North Korea's recent missile launches appeared to be in retaliation for the first large-scale joint US-South Korea air exercise in five years, which is scheduled to last five days through Friday, foreign policy experts said. There are growing concerns that North Korea could conduct its seventh nuclear test and its first since September 2017 ahead of the US nuclear test in next week's midterm elections.
On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned North Korea's repeated missile launches as a "barbaric and totally unacceptable act". and Japan's central prefectures are staying at home.
The South Korean military said a long-range ballistic missile was launched from the Sunan area of Pyongyang around 7:40 a.m., followed by two short-range missiles from South Pyongyang province from around 8:39 a.m., all of which were fired eastwards .
Regarding the first missile launched by North Korea, Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters, "We are still investigating the cause of their disappearance in the Sea of Japan, Hamada said.
The launches came a day after North Korea fired about 100 artillery shells and more than 20 ballistic and other short-range missiles, one of which fell on the southern side of the missile's de facto seaport th border for the first time since the partition of the Korean peninsula. On October 4, North Korea fired a missile that flew over the Japanese archipelago for the first time since 2017.
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