North Korea launches two missiles in protest of South Korea-US exercises 

North Korea launched two ballistic missiles Thursday to protest military drills by South Korea and the United States, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

North Korea launched the pair of short-range missiles toward the sea Thursday, South Korea said. The missiles traveled about 480 miles from North Korea’s capital region before landing in the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula.

The launch came hours after South Korea and the U.S. concluded their fifth round of military drills near the border Thursday, a move that the North Korea military called “provocative and irresponsible” ahead of the missile launch.

“Our army strongly denounces the provocative and irresponsible moves of the puppet military authorities escalating the military tension in the region despite its repeated warnings, and warns them solemnly,” a spokesperson for the North Korean Defense Ministry said in a statement published by North Korea state media KCNA.

“Our armed forces will fully counter any form of demonstrative moves and provocation of the enemies,” the statement added. 

The U.S., Japan and South Korea issued a joint statement Thursday condemning the missile launch by North Korea. The national security advisers of the three countries called on all nations to “fully implement” United Nations Security Council resolutions that are meant to prevent North Korea from “acquiring the technologies and materials needed to carry out these destabilizing launches.”

“These launches are clear violations of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, and demonstrate the threat the DPRK’s unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs pose to the region, international peace and security, and the global non-proliferation regime,” the advisers wrote in the statement.

This launch comes as national security adviser Jake Sullivan meets Thursday with advisers from South Korea and Japan in Tokyo, where they discussed coordination tactics in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, the White House said.

This is the first launch by North Korea since it failed to launch a spy satellite into orbit last month. North Korea announced that its plans to launch the spy satellite was necessary due to the United States’s “reckless” military exercises with South Korea. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.