North Korea has fired several cruise missiles towards the sea to the west of the Korean Peninsula, South Korea\u2019s military said, marking the second missile launch in apparent protest over the arrival of a nuclear-armed United States submarine at a South Korean port. According to international media reports, South Korea\u2019s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Saturday the launches were detected beginning at about 4am local time (19:00 Friday GMT). \u201cOur military has bolstered surveillance and vigilance while closely cooperating with the United States and maintaining a firm readiness posture,\u201d the JCS said, according to South Korean media. On Wednesday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles from an area near its capital, Pyongyang. They flew about 550km (341 miles) before landing in waters east of the Korean Peninsula. The flight distance of those missiles roughly matched the distance between Pyongyang and the South Korean port city of Busan, where the nuclear-armed submarine, the USS Kentucky, made the first visit by a US nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea since the 1980s. The distance which the missiles fired on Saturday travelled was not immediately released by the JCS. The missile launches come as Seoul and Washington ramp up defence cooperation in the face of growing tensions with the North, including joint US and South Korean military exercises with advanced stealth jets and new rounds of nuclear contingency planning meetings. North Korea\u2019s defence minister Kang Sun-nam said the Ohio-class submarine\u2019s deployment may have fallen \u201cunder the conditions of the use of nuclear weapons specified in the DPRK law on the nuclear force policy\u201d, using an acronym for North Korea\u2019s official name. South Korea\u2019s defence ministry on Friday described the deployment of the Kentucky and the nuclear contingency planning meetings between Washington and Seoul as \u201cdefensive response measures\u201d to counter the North Korean threat. South Korea\u2019s defence ministry also said that any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea would prompt an \u201cimmediate and decisive response\u201d resulting in the \u201cend\u201d of Kim Jong Un\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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