North Korea launched several ballistic missiles toward the Yellow Sea on Monday, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said, as the U.S. and South Korea began their annual Freedom Shield joint military exercise. Photo by Jeon Heon-kyun/EPA-EFE
SEOUL, March 10 (UPI) -- North Korea launched several ballistic missiles toward the Yellow Sea on Monday afternoon, Seoul's military said, on the first day of a large-scale joint U.S-South Korea military exercise on the Peninsula.
"The military detected several unidentified ballistic missiles launched from an inland area of Hwanghae Province in North Korea toward the West Sea [Yellow Sea] at around 1:50 p.m.," South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a text message to reporters.
"Our military is maintaining a full readiness posture while strengthening surveillance and vigilance and closely cooperating with the United States," the message said.
A military official later added that the JCS believes the projectiles were close-range ballistic missiles, or CRBMs.
CRBMs are missiles that have a range of less than 185 miles.
The launch was the North's fifth missile test of the year and the first time ballistic missiles were fired since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.
It came as the allies' annual springtime Freedom Shield joint training commenced. The exercise, which runs through March 20, involves computer-simulated drills and on-field training.
Field exercises this year include "urban combat operations, field hospital operations, mass casualty treatment and evacuation, field artillery exercises, air assault training, wet gap crossing, air defense artillery asset deployment and validation and a joint assault exercise with the U.S. Marine Corps," the U.S. Eighth Army said in a press release Monday.
Pyongyang regularly condemns the allies' joint drills as rehearsals for an invasion. Ahead of Monday's missile launch, the North issued a pair of statements criticizing Freedom Shield and warning of retaliatory provocations.
Last week, the state-run Korean Central News Agency ran a commentary saying that the United States would "pay dearly" for the exercise. On Monday, the North's Foreign Ministry also weighed in with a statement in KCNA, calling Freedom Shield a "dangerous provocative act" that will result in an "aggravated security crisis."
The joint exercise commenced under the shadow of last week's accidental bombing of a residential area in the city of Pocheon by two South Korean KF-16 fighter jets during a live-fire drill. Some 31 people were injured, according to the latest update from the South's Defense Ministry, including 19 civilians and 12 soldiers.
The ministry has suspended all live-fire drills, including those in Freedom Shield, until the exact cause of the accident is determined.
On Monday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Lee Young-su made a public apology, calling it an accident "that should never have happened and should never happen again."
"The air force, which should protect the lives and property of the people, inflicted harm on the people," Lee said at a press briefing. He promised to help residents with financial, medical and psychological support to recover from the unprecedented mistaken bombing.
The air force released its interim investigation report Monday and confirmed that human error was the cause of the accident, with one of the pilots mistakenly entering the coordinates for the bombing target.
The Defense Ministry also announced Monday that it was starting its own probe into the incident.
