Seoul: North Korea fires 4 ballistic missiles into ocean

China’s foreign minister has a plan to ease tensions in East Asia: North Korea should stop testing missiles and the United States and South Korea should stop joint military exercises, he has said.

Three of the four missiles landed within 200 miles of the Japanese coast, after flying an average of 620 miles at an altitude of 160 miles, according to Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada.

South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is serving as caretaker president following the impeachment in December of President Park Geun-hye, denounced the DPRK’s missiles launches as a grave provocation and a direct challenge to the worldwide community as it defied repeated warnings from the global society against ballistic missile launches.

Japan is considering beefing up its ballistic missile defense (BMD) capability in response to the four North Korean missiles launched toward Japan on March 6.

“South Korea and the USA are conducting a close-up analysis, regarding further information”, South Korea’s office of joint chiefs of staff said in a statement.

“At the moment, we might perceive the situation between North Korea and the United States to be very tense, but you would never know how Trump might actually react to the situation”.

Her comments came as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson prepares to visit Japan, South Korea and China starting next week, his first trip to the region, with talks to focus on North Korea.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley said on Twitter that the world “won’t allow” North Korea to continue on its “destructive path”.

The U.S. responded by increasing its joint-military exercises in the neighboring South Korea.

Yang Xiyu, a former senior Chinese official who once oversaw the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program in the 2000s, says it’s hard to predict what steps Beijing will take now that the deployment is under way. The launch was condemned by the United Nations for violating resolutions that ban the use ofballistic missile technology.

The first elements of the THAAD system, including two launchers, arrived at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometres south of Seoul, on Monday, the US and South Korean militaries said, quoted by the Yonhap news agency. The state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim Jong Un himself observed the launch.

Similar proposals have been rejected by the U.S.and South Korea in the past, arguing that the missile tests defy worldwide law and should not be negotiated.

Such defenses include the planned deployment to South Korea of a missile-defense system called THAAD.

Beijing is particularly eager to de-escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula that it sees gaining a worrisome momentum. Pyongyang has denounced it as a dress rehearsal for northward invasion. China has come under pressure to help stop Kim’s pursuit of more powerful nuclear weapons, with the USA setting up a missile-defense system in South Korea that Beijing views as a threat.

Currently, Japan’s BMD system consists of two main parts: Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) SM3 interceptor missiles carried on Aegis destroyers, and PAC-3 (Patriot) ground-based interceptor missiles.