North Korea fires missiles as Trump seeks Kim talks

North Korea fired a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles Thursday, prompting an emergency security meeting in Seoul and condemnation from South Korea as President Donald Trump moves to scale back joint U.S.-South Korean military drills and revive diplomacy with Kim Jong Un.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles were launched from the Pyongyang area toward the sea east of the Korean Peninsula. A military official told AFP that North Korea fired “around 10 short-range ballistic missiles,” while Al Jazeera reported South Korea condemned the launch of more than 10 missiles. The missiles flew about 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

“The ballistic missile launch is a grave act that violates UN Security Council resolutions,” South Korea’s presidential office said, calling on North Korea to immediately halt further launches. Japan’s prime minister’s office said on X that a suspected “ballistic missile launched by North Korea a short while ago has already fallen.”

The launches came as the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises between the United States and South Korea are set to end Friday, about a week earlier than planned. Seoul said the change came “at the suggestion of the U.S. side.” Trump said he ordered the reduction “based on my very good relationship with” Kim, describing the longstanding exercises as a “totally inappropriate and hostile signal” to North Korea. He also cited South Korea’s lack of assistance in the war with Iran as a factor.

The Pentagon said the reduced drills would cause “no degradation to U.S. training objectives.” The exercises are designed to prepare for a possible North Korean attack. Pyongyang has long denounced U.S.-South Korean drills as rehearsals for invasion and has often carried out missile tests during or around them.

Trump said he expects to meet Kim again later this year and said it was important to “get along” with him. He also said North Korea has 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons. South Korean officials said Thursday they estimate North Korea has between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads and could not explain the discrepancy with Trump’s figure.

South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back told lawmakers the missiles fired Thursday are believed to be 600 mm multiple rocket launchers. He said Seoul has tracked the weapons because they could potentially be deployed near the border. Pyongyang has previously described the 600 mm system, known externally as the KN-25, as capable of delivering tactical nuclear warheads.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of Kim Jong Un, said Wednesday that her brother had “good memories and feelings” about Trump and that the relationship between the two leaders remained “excellent.” But she said she was unaware of any current communication between them and maintained that U.S. “hostile policy” toward North Korea had not changed. After the launches, she described Trump’s decision to scale back the drills as “an evident disaster brought by the unrealistic and anachronistic security outlook” pursued by Seoul and criticized what she called South Korea’s “master-and-servant” relationship with the United States.

Trump met Kim three times during his first term but did not secure firm commitments from North Korea to restrain its nuclear weapons program. South Korea’s defense minister said Seoul remains opposed to officially recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-weapon state and said he did not believe Washington had “given up” on denuclearization.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said Wednesday he would “do his utmost” to support Trump’s peacemaking efforts with North Korea. Russia said it welcomed the U.S. decision to cut back its role in the exercises, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged South Korea not to take sides between Beijing and Washington and said the U.S. should abandon its “hostile” policy toward North Korea.