SEOUL: North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan Monday, the South Korean military said.

The missiles were fired from South Pyongan Province in the western part of North Korea between around 7 a.m. (10 p.m. Sunday GMT) and 7:11 a.m.

They are both presumed to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the country’s military fired two superlarge multiple rocket launcher systems, which are described by Pyongyang as a means of tactical nuclear attacks.

It was the third time this year for North Korea to launch a missile.

The Japanese government said it has made a solemn protest to North Korea, condemning the missile launches as a threat to regional security.

Japanese Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio told reporters Monday that the government has asked the UN Security Council to call an emergency meeting in response to North Korea’s missile launches. The council will hold the emergency meeting from 3 p.m. Monday US eastern time (8 p.m. GMT).

On Monday, Kim Yo Jong, an executive of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and younger sister of the country’s leader Kim Jong Un, expressed in a statement issued through the KCNA Pyongyang’s frustration at the US military’s deployment of strategic arms around the Korean Peninsula. She said the frequency of using the Pacific Ocean as North Korea’s firing range depends on the US military’s action character, hinting at the possibility of Pyongyang launching a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean.

On Sunday, US B-1B strategic bombers conducted a joint drill over the Korean Peninsula and the Sea of Japan with the South Korean military and the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force. In light of the joint drill, the KCNA claimed that North Korea demonstrated through the latest missile firing its readiness to counter the United States and South Korea.

According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, one of the two missiles flew about 400 kilometers at a maximum altitude of around 100 kilometers, and the other traveled some 350 kilometers and reached an altitude of about 50 kilometers. There have been no reports of damage from the missiles to aircraft or ships.

In response to the missile launches, the South Korean government on Monday added to the list of entities subject to its original sanctions four individuals and five organizations involved in North Korea’s nuclear and missile development and the country’s evasion of sanctions.

Pyongyang launched an apparent intercontinental ballistic missile on Saturday. The missile fell into waters within Japan’s EEZ west of the island of Oshima-Oshima in the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido.

In a statement released on Sunday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he “strongly condemns” the launch of yet another ballistic missile of intercontinental range by North Korea. He also reiterated his calls on Pyongyang to “immediately desist from taking any further provocative actions” and “resume dialogue leading to sustainable peace and the complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Following Monday’s missile firing by North Korea, a US State Department press official said Pyongyang’s successive missile launches pose a threat to neighboring countries, stressing that the United States’ commitment to the defense of Japan and South Korea is unwavering.

JIJI Press