North Korea fires ballistic missile ahead of US-South Korea drills

SEOUL: North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile on Thursday, Seoul´s military said, Pyongyang´s latest show of force just days before South Korea and the United States kick off major joint military exercises.

Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their worst points in decades, with the nuclear-armed North conducting ever more provocative banned weapons tests as Seoul moved to ramp up security cooperation with Washington in response.

Last year, Kim Jong Un´s regime declared North Korea an “irreversible” nuclear power and vowed to exponentially increase weapons production, including tactical nuclear weapons, as the US looks to move more assets to the region to defend ally Seoul.

Seoul´s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that it “detected the launch of one short-range ballistic missile from the North´s western port city of Nampo at 6:20 pm (0920 GMT)”. It added it was analysing “the possibility that North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles from the same region simultaneously”.