North Korea fired suspected ballistic missiles, Japan said on Sunday, marking the latest in a flurry of launches by Pyongyang to accelerate efforts to boost its military capabilities.
The incident marks the North's seventh ballistic missile launch this year and its fourth in April alone.
"As the US is focused on Iran, the North sees this as a golden time to upgrade their nuclear power and missile capability,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University, said.
Such tests violate UN Security Council resolutions against the North's missile program. Pyongyang rejects the UN ban and says it infringes its sovereign right to self-defense.
In a post on X/Twitter, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that the United States, South Korea, and Japan were closely coordinating in order to analyze the event.
"As the government, immediately after the launch, we convened the emergency response team at the Crisis Management Center in the Prime Minister's Office to collect information, while I instructed relevant ministries and agencies to devote all efforts to information gathering and analysis, to provide prompt and accurate information to the public, to thoroughly confirm the safety of aircraft, vessels, and the like, and to maintain a state of utmost readiness in preparation for any contingencies," the Prime Minister stated.
Multiple missiles fell outside Japan's exclusive economic zone
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi told reporters the launch was multiple and appeared to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
South Korea's military said the ballistic missile flew eastward, Yonhap News Agency said, without giving details. South Korea's Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.