North Korea fired what appeared to be two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on Wednesday — an act Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga slammed as “outrageous” — just days after testing a new weapon believed to be capable of delivering a nuclear bomb to most of Japan.
The spate of tests in the span of less than a week have served to highlight that the North Korean nuclear issue can bubble to the surface at any time, despite the United States’ push to focus on China.
Japan’s Defense Ministry said the missiles appeared to be ballistic. Initially, it said they were not believed to have landed in Japanese territorial waters or its exclusive economic zone, an area 200 nautical miles (370 km) from its shores. But Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi walked back this claim late Wednesday, telling reporters that, based on further analysis, the missiles were estimated to have splashed down within its EEZ, making them the first to land that close to Japan since last October.