North Korea Launches Several Cruise Missiles Towards the Yellow Sea

JAKARTA - South Korea's military said on Wednesday that North Korea had fired several cruise missiles towards the Yellow Sea, the latest launch amid rising tensions in the region.

Pyongyang's military's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the North Korean missile launch occurred at around 7 a.m. local time, but did not elaborate, citing ongoing analysis.

"While strengthening our monitoring and vigilance, our military has been coordinating closely with the United States to monitor for additional signs of North Korean provocation," JCS said in a text message sent to journalists, reported by The Korea Times, January 24.

This missile firing occurred when a South Korean Navy special warfare unit took part in training along the east coast in Gangwon Province which borders North Korea for 10 days, as quoted by Reuters.

The training aims to strengthen operational readiness, following North Korea's recent artillery shelling near the disputed maritime border and weapons tests, the JCS said.

This is North Korea's first cruise missile launch since September 2023, when Pyongyang test-fired two long-range strategic cruise missiles with mock nuclear warheads towards the Yellow Sea.

Moreover, this latest launch came 10 days after Pyongyang test-fired a solid-fuel medium-range ballistic missile carrying a hypersonic warhead into the East Sea, in its first missile launch this year.

Hypersonic missiles themselves are considered more difficult to detect and shoot down, because they travel at speeds of at least Mach 5, are agile and capable of changing direction during flight.

Last week, North Korea claimed to have tested an underwater nuclear weapons system it is developing, in response to the latest joint maritime drills involving South Korea, the United States and Japan.

It is known that tensions are still high along the inter-Korean border because the buffer zone created under the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement became invalid after North Korea conducted live-fire drills near the western maritime border earlier this month.

South Korea's military said it would resume artillery shelling and drills near the border, as Pyongyang's shelling near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto maritime border in the Yellow Sea continues, eliminating a mutually agreed buffer zone.