North Korea fired a projectile towards the sea on Saturday, South Korea and Japan said, with Tokyo saying it may have been a ballistic missile, while the US and South Korea conducted military drills.
The projectile was fired toward the sea off North Korea’s east coast, the South Korean military said in a brief message to reporters. It gave no further details. Japan’s coast guard said the projectile appeared to have fallen into the sea.
It appeared to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported, citing defence ministry sources.
Seoul and Washington, five days earlier, launched the major drills, which they say are purely defensive, aimed at testing readiness against military threats from North Korea.
Nuclear-armed North Korea frequently displays its anger and objections to such exercises, saying they are “dress rehearsals” for armed aggression against it by the allies.
On Thursday, South Korea’s prime minister met Donald Trump in Washington to discuss ways to reopen dialogue with the North, which has been suspended since 2019.
Kim Min-seok said Saturday that Donald Trump thought a meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, would be “good”.
Washington has for decades led efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme, but summits, sanctions and diplomatic pressure have had little impact.
In recent months, the Trump administration has pushed to revive high-level talks with Pyongyang, considering a possible summit with Kim Jong-un this year, potentially during Trump’s April visit to Beijing.
Seoul’s Kim, who met Trump in Washington, said the US president told him: “Meeting (Kim Jong-un) would be good. It’s really good to meet. But it could happen when we go to China this time, or it might not, or it could even be later, couldn’t it?”
Kim told reporters that he and Trump agreed that if a meeting with Kim Jong-un “happens soon, or around the time of the China visit, that would in itself be meaningful”.
“But even if not, what matters in essence is that dialogue or contact takes place, and (Trump) appears firm on that point,” Kim added.
Trump said during a trip to Asia in October that he was “100%” open to meeting with Kim Jong-un, a remark that went unanswered by the North.
After largely ignoring those overtures for months, Kim Jong-un recently said the two nations could “get along” if Washington accepted Pyongyang’s nuclear status.
North Korea also recently dashed hopes of a diplomatic thaw with South Korea, describing its latest peace efforts as a “clumsy, deceptive farce”.
*With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
