Several governments have issued warnings after North Korea is believed to have fired a ballistic missile today off its east coast.
At 7:28 p.m. local time, Japan’s Coast Guard reported that a potential ballistic missile launch had occurred.
Authorities later claimed that it had touched down in the nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which only heightened the already tense situation.
Members of the emergency gathering team are expected to gather at PM’s Fumio Kishida’s residence to discuss how to respond to the threat from Pyongyang.
Separately, the South Korean military said the launch happened on Thursday night but gave no further details.
This comes came after North Korea’s military vowed an unspecified response after South Korean and US troops finished five rounds of large-scale live-fire drills near the Koreas’ heavily fortified border earlier today.
This was the last round of firing drills after they began last month. This year’s drills were the biggest of their kind since they began in 1977.
‘Our response to (the South Korean-U.S. drills) is inevitable,’ an unidentified spokesperson of the North Korean Defecse Ministry said in a statement carried by state media.
‘Our armed forces will fully counter any form of demonstrative moves and provocation of the enemies.’
Thursday’s drills were observed by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and other senior South Korean and US military officials.
Tensions have risen in past months as the pace of both North Korean weapons tests and US-South Korea military exercises has increased in tit-for-tat responses.
North Korea has test-fired about 100 missiles since the start of 2022.