Kishida: Launch of 2 North Korean missiles near Japan 'escalation of provocations'

June 15 (UPI) -- Japanese defense officials said that North Korea fired at least two ballistic missiles into the water off the Ishikawa Prefecture, into Japan's exclusive economic zone on Thursday.

Both missiles landed about 155 miles northwest of Ishikawa's Hegura Island traveling at speeds of 530 mph and 560 mph, Japan's Parliamentary Vice Minister of Defense Kimi Onoda said. Onoda said the missiles landed well within Japan's economic zone, which extends out some 200 nautical miles from its coast.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the short-range North Korean missiles were fired from the Sunan area of Pyongyang on Thursday evening.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the launches represent "an escalation of provocations against the international community as a whole." Japanese officials said they have already formally protested the missile launches with Pyongyang.

Takehiro Funakoshi, head of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, said he held talks with the United States and South Korea after the incident. Officials said that both Tokyo and Seoul remain on alert for further military missile launches by North Korea.

American officials criticized the missile launches, calling them "clear violations of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions."

"(The launches) demonstrate the threat the DPRK's unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs pose to the region, international peace and security, and the global non-proliferation regime," the United States, Japan, and Republic of Korea said in a joint statement issued by the White House.

"This action demonstrates the need for all countries to fully implement DPRK-related UN Security Council resolutions that are intended to prohibit the DPRK from acquiring the technologies and materials needed to carry out these destabilizing launches."

The missile launches come shortly after the joint South Korean-United States live-fire military drills that South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol described as "the largest live-fire drills ever held with the United States."

In late May, North Korea fired what it called its "space launch vehicle" for a satellite that failed. It still forced Seoul to issue emergency sirens warnings after the eventually failed launch was fired southward.

North Korea notified Japan and the International Maritime Organization of its planned satellite launch but Tokyo officials accused North Korea of using it as a ruse to launch missiles.