North Korea launches missile tests hours after agreeing to US nuclear talks

Donald Trump met with Kim Jong-Un at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in June
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
John Dunne @jhdunne10 September 2019

North Korea launched two short-range missiles today only hours after signalling it is ready to resume denuclearisation talks with America.

The South Korean military said the projectiles were fired from South Pyongan province, north of the capital city of Pyongyang, and flew about 200 miles towards the east coast.

Earlier North Korean state media carried a statement from vice foreign minister Choe Son-hui saying the country was willing to have “comprehensive discussions” with the US in late September. Mrs Choe warned the US needed to present a new approach or the talks could fall apart again. The US State Department said there were no talks to announce.

President Donald Trump called North Korea’s announcement “interesting”, adding: “We’ll see what happens.”

Mr Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met at the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas in June and agreed to restart talks that had stalled since a second summit between the two leaders in Vietnam in February.

US officials have said their attempts to resume talks after the June meeting have gone unanswered. North Korea has conducted at least eight test launches since then. “All of these acts by North Korea do not help efforts to ease tension on the Korean peninsula, and we reiterate our calls for an immediate halt,” South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in