This Alarms China and Russia More Than North Korea’s Missile Launch

“We will collect information and strongly protest to North Korea”.

The launches came ahead of a trip by new US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to the region.

USA officials told NBC the “first elements” of a THAAD installation have already arrived in South Korea, hours after its acting president and prime minister begged for a deployment as quickly as possible there.

The latest missile launches also pushed the U.S.to deploy its missile defense system at the Osan Air Base in South Korea.

It’s common for North Korea to fire missiles during the drills, which are set to continue through April, and experts expect the North to launch several more missiles through then.

In the drills with South Korea, the U.S. is using nuclear-propelled aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, nuclear strategic bombers, and stealth fighters.

North Korea had threatened to take “strong retaliatory measures” after South Korea and the USA began annual military drills last week.

North Korea claims the military exercises are a rehearsal for an invasion, despite US and South Korean insistence that they are defensive in nature. The regime also released images of the missile launches, with a smiling Kim in attendance.

Geng said that last Friday China’s top envoy on North Korea nuclear issues Wu Dawei had called his counterparts in Washington and Seoul.

South Korean military claimed that the missiles had flown more than 600 miles.

The four missiles were fired from a known launch site on North Korea’s west coast, not far from the border with China, at 7:36 a.m. local time.

As usual, this angered Pyongyang and triggered the test firing of four ballistic missiles Monday.

“The launches are clearly in violation of (UN) Security Council resolutions”.

A C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft has delivered the first equipment which will be transferred from the USA air base to the southeastern rural county of Seongju, about 300 kilometers south of Seoul, the site for the battery, it said.

Under leader Kim Jong-Un, Pyongyang has ambitions to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the USA mainland – which Mr Trump has vowed will not happen.

Starting in 2006, the United Nations has imposed increasingly tougher restrictions, including an arms embargo, on the Kim regime to punish the country for developing nuclear weapons and missiles.

It was not immediately clear what type of missiles were launched, the South Korean Ministry of Defense announced at a press briefing on Monday.

“Holding nuclear weapons won’t bring security, using military force won’t be a way out”, Wang said. “North Korea is demonstrating that its target is not just limited to the Korean peninsula any more but can extend to Japan at any time and even the USA”, he said.