North Korea fired multiple unidentified ballistic missiles off its west coast on March 10, according to South Korea’s military.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the missiles were fired at around 1:50 p.m. from North Korea’s Hwanghae Province toward the Yellow Sea.
The missiles were launched on the day the U.S. and South Korea kicked off Freedom Shield, an annual, large-scale military exercise. The drills are set to run until March 20, but live-fire exercises were suspended after Korean jets mistakenly dropped bombs on a civilian town last week.
North Korea had condemned Freedom Shield as a “dangerous provocative act,” claiming it justifies Pyongyang’s “stance of taking the strongest countermeasures against the U.S.”
This marks North Korea’s first ballistic missile launch in nearly two months since Jan. 14 and the first since U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
