Just hours after North Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui publicly committed to resuming denuclearization talks with the United States after a months-long stalemate after a failed meeting in February, the country’s military fired off what were reported as “unidentified projectiles,” according to Bloomberg .
South Korea’s military said the projectiles were fired from Wonsan, North Korea, which is a coastal town on the eastern side of the country. Further specifics regarding the projectiles were not provided by South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, but they stated that they were monitoring the situation and staying alert.
“Our military is monitoring the situation in case of additional launches and maintaining a readiness posture,” the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a release concerning the matter.
The announcement on Tuesday that Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump would resume denuclearization talks indicated that North Korea was “ready to attend” the talks and is looking forward to progress with the U.S. In addition, both countries agreed to have “preliminary contact” a day before the proposed meeting, but refused to announce where that would take place.
The Straits Times reported that a top official for Japan’s government said the projectiles landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone, but noted that no equipment such as aircraft or ships were damaged or in danger as a result.
The launch marks the ninth projectile test since the breakdown of talks after Trump met Kim Jong Un in the Demilitarized Zone that sits on the border between North and South Korea. Those talks broke down after Trump refused to lift heavy economic sanctions on the country in exchange for them shutting down one of their primary nuclear sites.
Officials indicated that the renewed talks between the two countries would officially begin on October 5.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , Kim invited Trump to North Korea’s capital city, Pyongyang, reportedly in August. The two leaders have met a total of three times, with those meetings taking place in Singapore, Vietnam, and most recently, at the DMZ.
Though Kim was apparently pleased with the outcome of the meeting, which was primarily to soothe tensions over the country’s expanding nuclear weapons program, commitment to denuclearization talks quickly stalled afterward.
Experts claim that North Korea could be in possession of between 30 and 60 missiles, with the possibility of one of those being an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with flight capability that could bring it to the U.S. mainland.
The White House’s former head of Asian Affairs, Victor Cha, has criticized the president for “legitimizing” the rogue nation on the world stage.
