All three ballistic missiles launched were medium-range Rodong-class and flew about 1,000 km (600 miles), South Korea’s military said.
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The missiles were fired from areas around Hwangju county, in North Hwanghae province, towards the Sea of Japan, South Korea’s military said in a statement.
The launch – the latest in a series of North Korean missile tests that violate U.N. Security Council resolutions – came on the final day of the summit.
The United States strongly condemns North Korea’s launch of three ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan.
Such tests are fairly common when worldwide attention is turned to Northeast Asia, and this one comes as world leaders are gathering for the G-20 summit of advanced and emerging economies in the city of Hangzhou in eastern China. “North Korea chose to launch the missile at this time in an attempt to interfere in the discussions about North Korea at the G20 summit”, Zheng Jiyong, director of the Center for Korean Studies at the Shanghai-based Fudan University, told the Global Times.
After the launch, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe discussed the incident privately “and agreed to cooperate on monitoring the situation”.
President Xi Jinping expressed China’s opposition to South Korean President Park Geun-hye on the U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea on Monday, saying “it could intensify conflicts”.
Before Monday’s launch, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, Park criticized the North for what she called provocations that are hurting Seoul-Beijing ties.
The AP notes that Chinese President Xi Jinping has been attempting to persuade Park to abandon the plan – China sees it as a US spying effort.
From the summit, a senior U.S. official said the launch was “reckless” and could pose threats to civil aviation and maritime commerce in the region.
China says the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system is meant to spy on China, while Seoul and Washington say the system is intended exclusively to defend against North Korea’s missile threat.
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This comes just under two weeks after Pyongyang test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile. Xi told Park that his country remains committed to “the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.
