(Bloomberg) -- North Korea fired two short-range missiles into its eastern waters as the U.S. and South Korea began joint military drills that Kim Jong Un’s regime claims are preparations for an invasion of the isolated state.
Both missiles were fired about 490 kilometers (305 miles) into the sea between North Korea and Japan from the western coastal city of Nampo, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry. North Korea said Monday it would not remain passive in response to the exercises.
Japan immediately protested the launches in a twitter post from the office of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Diplomatic efforts to pressure North Korea to abandon its atomic-weapons program are floundering, and the nation continues to threaten a fourth nuclear test.
“The launches are North Korea’s response to the start of the drills,” Koh Yu Hwan, a North Korea professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, said by phone. “These types of launches tend to subside once the drills get on their way, yet North Korean troops will stay on high alert.”
The launches are the first since North Korea fired missiles early February into the water known in South Korea as the East Sea, and in Japan as the Sea of Japan.
South Korean defense stocks rose Monday by as much as 4.5 percent in Seoul to the highest intraday level since May.
Kim instructed senior officials to keep troops ready for war on a visit to a museum commemorating the Korean War, the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported Saturday. North Korea says the exercises are preparations for invasion, while the U.S. and South Korea say they are purely defensive.
Key Resolve, a computer-simulated drill, ends March 13, and Foal Eagle, a field exercise, will finish on April 24.
The prospect of a breakthrough in efforts to restart six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program rose after a series of diplomatic meetings in January. But after U.S. President Barack Obama criticized the regime for its human rights record in an interview on YouTube, North Korea said on Feb. 4 said it would no longer “sit face-to-face” with the U.S.
“Diplomacy will probably take a back seat during the drills,” Koh said. “But we should also note diplomats haven’t jettisoned the efforts to restart the six-party talks.”
The six-party track involving North Korea and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. collapsed in 2009 after the government in Pyongyang walked out in response to United Nations condemnation of a long-range rocket launch.
North Korea may have as many as 100 nuclear arms in five years and become capable of mounting them on a range of road-mobile missiles, Joel Wit, a researcher at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said Feb. 24.
In an e-mailed analysis to Bloomberg News, Wit said his moderate projection for North Korea’s nuclear stockpile is for it to grow to 50 bombs by 2020 while the country develops a new generation of road-mobile medium- and long-range missiles tipped with nuclear warheads.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sam Kim in Seoul at skim609@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net Andy Sharp, Greg Ahlstrand
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