North Korea kept up its record pace of missile launches on Thursday, firing two short-range weapons into the Sea of Japan and offering no sign that it would halt its quest to build ever-more powerful weapons, even as a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier was redeployed to waters off the Korean Peninsula.
The missile launches were the sixth in 12 days and the first since Tuesday, when Pyongyang triggered concern in Tokyo after it lobbed an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) over Japan for the first time in five years.
The weapons tested Thursday flew 350 and 800 kilometers, respectively, hitting maximum altitudes of 50 to 100 km, before landing outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from its coast, Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters. The second missile was apparently launched on an "irregular" trajectory, Hamada said, a sign that it may have been one of the country’s advanced new weapons designed to evade missile defenses.