North Korea fires suspected long-range ballistic missile toward East Sea

ANKARA (AA) - North Korea fired an apparent long-range ballistic missile toward the East Sea on Friday, according to the South Korean military.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launch from Sunan district in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang.

"While strengthening our monitoring and vigilance, our military is maintaining a full readiness posture in close cooperation with the U.S.," Yonhap News Agency quoted the JCS as saying.

On Thursday, North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile into the East Sea.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned the latest missile launch and said the missile likely fell within his country's exclusive economic zone in the Sea of Japan.

The projectile of an “intercontinental ballistic missile class” flew around 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) in a “lofted” trajectory and reached an altitude of up to 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles), Kyodo News Agency cited Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno as saying.

Matsuno added that the government did not issue an order to destroy it.

The latest launch came just a day after North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui threatened the US with a "fiercer military counteraction" to its bolstered offer of extended deterrence to South Korea and Japan.

"I clarify a serious warning stand toward the fact that the U.S., Japan and South Korea held a three-party summit a few days ago and talked about a ‘bolstered offer of extended deterrence’ and ‘strong and resolute counteraction,’ describing the DPRK's legitimate and just military counteractions, incited by their war drills for aggression, as ‘provocation’," she said in a statement.

US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol met in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit on the weekend.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have risen further following recent joint military drills by South Korea and the US, as well as North Korean missile tests.

*Writing by Islamuddin Sajid