North Korea fired several ballistic missiles into the sea on Monday, South Korea’s military said, hours after South Korean and US troops kicked off their large annual combined drills, which the North views as an invasion rehearsal.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile firings, North Korea’s fifth missile launch event this year, were detected from the North’s Hwanghae province but gave no further details such as how far they flew.
Earlier Monday, the South Korean and US militaries began their annual joint military exercises, which are scheduled to last 11 days.
The Freedom Shield command post exercise began after the South Korean and US militaries paused live-fire training while Seoul investigates how two of its fighter jets mistakenly bombed a civilian area during a warm-up drill last week.
The drills’ start drew the condemnation of nuclear-armed North Korea, which issued a government statement calling the exercises a “dangerous provocative act” that increases the risks of military conflict.
About 30 people were injured, two of them seriously, when two South Korean KF-16 fighter jets mistakenly fired eight MK-82 bombs on a civilian area in Pocheon, a town near the North Korean border, on Thursday.
The bombing occurred while South Korean and US forces were engaging in a live-fire drill ahead of the larger Freedom Shield exercise.
In a background briefing to domestic reporters on Monday, the South Korean air force repeated its initial assessment last week that one of the KF-16 pilots had entered the wrong coordinates for a bombing site.
The unidentified pilot didn’t recognize the error during a pre-takeoff check and, rushing to meet scheduled timing, failed to visually verify the target before proceeding with the bombing.
The second pilot had the correct coordinates but focused only on maintaining formation with the other aircraft and dropped the bombs following the first pilot’s instructions, failing to recognize they d