South Korea’s defence ministry said Saturday that North Korea fired at least one “unidentified projectile” eastward, weeks after Pyongyang dismissed Seoul’s latest peace overtures as a “deceptive farce”.
North Korea fired at least one “unidentified projectile eastward”, Seoul’s defence ministry said in a statement, without providing details.
Pyongyang recently dashed hopes of a diplomatic thaw with South Korea, Washington’s security ally, describing its latest peace efforts as a “clumsy, deceptive farce”.
The announcement came hours after South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok said that US President Donald Trump thinks a meeting with Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un would be “good”.
Washington has for decades led efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme, but summits, sanctions and diplomatic pressure have had little impact.
In recent months, the Trump administration has pushed to revive high-level talks with Pyongyang, eyeing a possible summit with Kim Jong Un this year, potentially during Trump’s April visit to Beijing.
Seoul’s Kim, who met Trump in Washington, said the US president told him: “Meeting (Kim Jong Un) would be good” and “it could happen when we go to China this time, or it might not”.
Trump said during a trip to Asia in October that he was “100 per cent” open to meeting with Kim Jong Un, a remark that went unanswered by the North.
After largely ignoring those overtures for months, Kim Jong Un recently said that the two nations could “get along” if Washington accepted Pyongyang’s nuclear status.
