North Korea launched more than ten short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea on Thursday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed, in a move that defied a recent diplomatic gesture from US President Donald Trump. The missiles were fired from the Pyongyang area at around 5pm local time and flew approximately 300 kilometres before landing in the sea. South Korea's presidential national security council convened an emergency meeting and urged Pyongyang to halt the launches, which are banned under UN Security Council resolutions. The South Korean military said it had bolstered surveillance and was sharing information closely with the US and Japan.

The launches came just days after Trump publicly signalled a desire to re-engage with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, ordering the Pentagon to "substantially reduce" the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises — an 11-day drill involving 18,000 South Korean troops and forces from 11 allied nations — and describing them as "inappropriate and hostile" toward Pyongyang. The exercises were cut short by half and ended Friday. Trump told reporters Wednesday that he expected to meet Kim later this year, saying of the North Korean leader: "He likes me." He also cited, for the first time, a specific figure for North Korea's nuclear arsenal, claiming it possesses "57 very powerful" nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang responded coolly to the overture. Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of Kim Jong Un and a senior figure in the North Korean leadership, dismissed the scaling-back of the drills as "unworthy of comment", insisting their "provocative and aggressive nature" remained unchanged regardless of their size or duration. She also denied Trump's claim that her brother had been in contact with him, saying it "must be the only thing I am unaware of in our foreign policy." North Korea's state media made no mention of Thursday's missile launches the following morning — the third consecutive time Pyongyang has departed from its usual practice of announcing such tests publicly, suggesting the launches may have been deemed to offer little propaganda value.

The episode has exposed significant strains within the US-South Korea alliance. Trump's unilateral decision to curtail the drills — made without consulting Seoul in advance — caught South Korean officials off guard. South Korea's Foreign Minister acknowledged that officials had not been informed of Trump's intent beforehand. Analysts warn that Trump's approach conflates security and trade disputes, having also criticised Seoul for declining to support US military action against Iran and for what his administration considers insufficient burden-sharing. South Korea currently spends around $1 billion annually to host approximately 27,000 US troops on its territory. The two Koreas are technically still at war, having never signed a peace treaty after the Korean War ended in 1953.

For South Korea, the broader concern is what comes next. Experts note that Kim Jong Un is currently profiting from a deepening alliance with Russia — North Korea has supplied what is believed to be billions of dollars' worth of artillery and at least 13,000 troops to support Moscow's war in Ukraine — and has little incentive to return to nuclear diplomacy unless the US is prepared to formally accept North Korea as a nuclear state, which remains Pyongyang's core demand. Unless that threshold is crossed, few analysts expect a substantive summit to materialise, even as Trump insists one is forthcoming.