North Korea launched multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea east of the Korean Peninsula on Sunday morning, South Korea's military announced, the latest in a series of weapons tests that has drawn condemnation from Seoul and fresh warnings from the international community about Pyongyang's expanding nuclear arsenal.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles were detected at around 6:10 a.m. local time, fired from the Sinpho area — a coastal city on North Korea's eastern seaboard known to house submarine-related military facilities — and travelled approximately 140 kilometres before falling into what Koreans call the East Sea, known internationally as the Sea of Japan. South Korean and U.S. intelligence services are conducting a detailed technical analysis of the launches, and relevant information has been shared with Japan. Analysts are examining whether the missiles may have been submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), given Sinpho's known submarine infrastructure and a previous SLBM test conducted from those waters in May 2022.
Sunday's launches bring to six the number of ballistic missile tests North Korea is known to have conducted since the start of 2026. Earlier this month, on April 8, Pyongyang fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles in a rare pair of launches carried out within a single day. State media subsequently claimed the weapons included tactical ballistic missiles fitted with cluster bomb warheads capable of incinerating targets within their range. On April 14, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally oversaw a cruise missile test from a destroyer in the Yellow Sea. Unlike ballistic missiles, which arc through space, cruise missiles remain within the atmosphere and are not prohibited under United Nations sanctions — a legal distinction Pyongyang has been known to exploit.
The launches come at a delicate diplomatic moment. South Korea's presidential Office of National Security convened an emergency meeting and condemned the tests as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, which ban North Korea from conducting ballistic missile launches as part of a broader sanctions regime targeting its nuclear weapons programme. Seoul's defence ministry called on Pyongyang to