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North Korea fired more than 10 short-range ballistic missiles from the Pyongyang area toward the East Sea on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, hours after President Donald Trump announced plans to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this year.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles were launched at around 5:00 p.m. and flew approximately 300 kilometers, adding that South Korean and US authorities were conducting a detailed analysis of the weapons’ specifications. South Korea’s presidential office convened an emergency security meeting following the launches, condemning them as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions and ordering heightened military readiness.
The launches came as South Korea and the United States hold a shortened version of their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises, scaled back on Trump’s order. North Korea has long condemned the joint drills as rehearsals for invasion and has frequently timed missile launches to coincide with them.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he intends to meet Kim this year, part of an effort to revive the personal rapport he has said he built with the North Korean leader during his first term. Trump said it was important to “get along” with Kim and stated that Pyongyang now possesses 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons, a figure below South Korea’s own estimate of roughly 80 to 120 warheads.
Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s influential sister, said Wednesday that her brother retains “good memories and feelings” about Trump and described the relationship between the two leaders as “excellent,” though she said she was unaware of any current direct communication between them. Her remarks came hours after Seoul announced the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises would conclude Friday, about a week earlier than originally scheduled, at what South Korean officials described as the suggestion of the US side. The Pentagon said the reduced exercise schedule would cause no degradation to US training objectives.
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The drills are designed to prepare South Korean and US forces for a possible North Korean attack. The United States maintains about 28,500 troops in South Korea, a deployment dating to the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically still at war.
South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said Thursday that Seoul remains opposed to formally recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-weapon state. Asked whether Washington had abandoned the goal of North Korean denuclearization, Ahn said he did not believe that to be the case.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who has consistently pushed for strengthening the country’s homegrown defense capabilities to reduce reliance on the United States, said Wednesday he would do his utmost to support Trump’s peacemaking efforts with Pyongyang.
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Trump’s renewed focus on Kim, paired with the decision to scale back joint military exercises, has unsettled several Asian allies and prompted speculation that the US president is pursuing a foreign policy win amid a stalled Iran war. Trump held two previous in-person meetings with Kim during his first term, in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019, along with a brief meeting at the inter-Korean border in 2019, none of which produced a lasting denuclearization agreement or formal peace declaration. Talks between the two governments effectively stalled after the 2019 Hanoi summit ended without an agreement, and North Korea has continued expanding its missile and nuclear weapons programs in the years since, including tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States.
South Korea’s own estimate of North Korea’s arsenal, cited by Seoul’s military and intelligence assessments as ranging between roughly 80 and 120 warheads, is notably higher than the 57 figure Trump cited Wednesday, a discrepancy that was not addressed or reconciled in either government’s public statements following Trump’s remarks.
No date, location, or format has been announced for the planned Trump-Kim meeting, and neither government has confirmed whether preparatory diplomatic contact has begun ahead of any summit.
