North Korea fires missiles, 3 reach Japan waters

North Korea fired multiple missiles from its Tongchang-ri region, where a missile base is located, early on Monday (Mar 6^th), South Korea's military said.

The missiles - fired from the country's east coast - flew 1,000km, the military added.

A television broadcasting a news report on North Korea firing ballistic missiles, at a railway station in Seoul on March 6^th, 2017. (Photo: Reuters)

Tongchang-ri is near the North's border with China, where the isolated state fired a long-range rocket last year that put an object into orbit and was condemned by the United Nations for violating resolutions that ban the use of missile technology.

A South Korean military official said the launch, which came at 7.36am (5.36am, Hanoi time), was being analysed to determine the type of the projectile used.

Seoul said several missiles were filed into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, and that South Korea and the U.S. were "closely analysing" tracking data for further details.

"North Korea today fired four ballistic missiles almost simultaneously and they flew some 1,000km," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in parliament. "Three of them landed in our country's Exclusive Economic Zone."

"This clearly shows North Korea has entered a new stage of threat," he said, adding he would call a meeting of the country's National Security Council.

The incident marked just the second time that North Korean missiles have landed in Japan's EEZ -- a 200-nautical mile area off its coast that gives it certain rights in terms of exploitation of natural resources.

North Korea in August last year fired a ballistic missile directly into Japan's EEZ for the first time, one of a series of launches that drew intense international condemnation.

"Repeated launches by North Korea are a serious, provocative action in terms of security and clearly violate UN Security Council resolutions. We can never tolerate this," PM Abe said.

The Japan Coast Guard said that there was no damage reported to shipping in the area where the missiles landed. Under international law, territorial waters extend up to 22km from the coast of a landmass.

Seoul and Washington launched annual joint military exercises last week that regularly infuriate Pyongyang, which condemns them as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

No reports of damage to shipping or aircraft had been received since the launches, Japanese officials said.

The U.S. military did not immediately comment. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States also detected apparent launch activity in North Korea but declined to offer details.

Visiting a North Korean army headquarters unit, leader Kim Jong-Un ordered the troops to "set up thorough countermeasures of a merciless strike against the enemy's sudden air assault", the state-run Korean Central News Agency said on the day the Foal Eagle exercises started.

North Korea test fired a new type of missile, known as the Pukguksong-2, into the sea early last month, and has said it will continue to launch new strategic weapons.

"Not only Pukguksong-2 but newer independent strategic weapons will fly high vigorously in the sky off the ground as long as the United States and the puppet regime are going ahead with their nuclear threat to us and an exercise for invasion war against the North," North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers' Party said in a commentary last week.

Last month's test was the first since U.S. President Donald Trump was elected.

Last year the country conducted two nuclear tests and numerous missile launches in its quest to develop a nuclear weapons system capable of hitting the continental U.S./.

VNF/Reuters