SEOUL: North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean off its east coast on Sunday, the latest in an unprecedented flurry of launches that South Korea decried as “inappropriate” amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

Two “short-range projectiles” were launched from the coastal Wonsan area, and flew 230km at a maximum altitude of 30km, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff reported.

“In a situation where the entire world is experiencing difficulties due to Covid-19, this kind of military act by North Korea is very inappropriate and we call for an immediate halt,” South Korea’s JCS said in a statement, according to Yonhap news agency.

The nuclear-armed North has yet to issue a statement on Sunday’s missiles but attributed its three other launches this month — all of which landed in the Sea of Japan — to “long-range artillery” drills.

Japan’s Ministry of Defence said they appeared to be ballistic missiles, and they did not land in Japanese territory or its exclusive economic zone.

They would be the eighth and ninth missiles launched in four rounds of tests this month as North Korean troops conduct ongoing military drills, usually personally overseen by leader Kim Jong Un.

That would be the most missiles ever fired in a single month by North Korea, according to a tally by Shea Cotton, senior researcher at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies.

“Coming this early in the year, the only time we’ve seen tests this frequently were in 2016 and 2017, both of which were huge years for North Korea’s missile programme,” he said in a post on Twitter.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2020