North Korea fired several ballistic missiles into the sea on Monday, just hours after South Korea and the United States kicked off their first major joint military exercise of President Donald Trump’s second term.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile firings were detected from the North’s southwestern Hwanghae Province. The weapons were described as close-range, and in response, South Korea’s military said it has bolstered its surveillance posture and is closely coordinating with the U.S.
“We are aware of the DPRK’s multiple ballistic missile launches and are consulting closely with the Republic of Korea and Japan, as well as other regional allies and partners. The United States condemns these actions and calls on the DPRK to refrain from further unlawful and destabilizing acts,” the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. “While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, or territory, or to our allies, we continue to monitor the situation. The U.S. commitments to the defense of the ROK and Japan remain ironclad.”
The launches come after South Korean and U.S. forces began their annual Freedom Shield exercise Monday.
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“Freedom Shield is an 11-day exercise conducted by the Republic of Korea and the United States consisting of training to reflect the Korea Theater of Operations – a combined, joint, multi-domain, and interagency operating environment,” according to the U.S. Army.
“Field training events throughout FS25 include urban combat operations, field hospital operations, mass casualty treatment and evacuation, field artillery exercises, air assault training, wet gap crossing, air defense artillery asset deployment and validation, and a joint assault exercise with the U.S. Marine Corps,” the Army added.
However, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry is calling the exercises an “aggressive and confrontational war rehearsal.”
“Despite of the DPRK’s repeated warning, the US and the Republic of Korea are dead set on staging the large-scale joint military exercises. This is a dangerous provocative act of driving the acute situation on the Korean peninsula, where a single accidental gun report may spark off a physical conflict between the two sides, beyond the extreme limit,” read a statement published in North Korean state media.
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This year’s training comes after South Korean KF-16 fighter jets accidentally dropped bombs on a civilian area during a live-fire training exercise with the U.S. on Thursday, injuring multiple people and damaging multiple buildings, including three houses and a Catholic church.
South Korean media reported that the accident happened in Pocheon, a city near the heavily armed border with North Korea. About 30 people were wounded, two of them seriously.
The initial assessment from the South Korean air force was that one of the KF-16 pilots entered the wrong coordinates and failed to visually verify the target before proceeding with the bombing. The second pilot had the correct coordinates but focused only on maintaining flight formation and dropped the bombs on the first pilot’s instructions without recognizing the target was wrong, according to the content of the latest briefing provided to The Associated Press.
Gen. Lee Youngsu, chief of staff of the South Korean air force, bowed and apologized Monday over the injuries and property damage caused by the bombing, which he said “should have never happened and must never happen again.”
Fox News’ Bradford Betz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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