North Korea fires around a dozen ballistic missiles, Seoul says

Seoul — North Korea fired around a dozen suspected short-range ballistic missiles from its eastern coast on Thursday, South Korea's military said, days after Pyongyang rejected an offer of border talks from the South.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said its military detected "around a dozen short-range ballistic missiles fired from the Wonsan area of North Korea towards the East Sea", the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan, the South China Morning Post reported.

"Our military has stepped up surveillance and vigilance against possible additional launches," the Joint Chiefs of Staff added in its statement.

Tokyo also confirmed the launch, though it was not immediately clear how many missiles Japan had detected, according to The Japan Times. The missiles were believed to have fallen outside Japan's exclusive economic zone. Seoul said they had been fired from the city of Wonsan, the Yonhap news agency reported.

The barrage is the North's first missile launch since 12 October, when Pyongyang tested what it said was a "tactical" ballistic missile to confirm a technical upgrade to "an important core element". That claim came from North Korea itself and has not been independently verified.

Tensions between the two Koreas have been building for weeks. Landmine explosions along the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone injured three South Korean soldiers, and Pyongyang recently turned down Seoul's proposal for talks on the border.

What happens next rests on further detection: South Korea's military says it is watching for additional launches, and Japan has yet to give its own count of the missiles it tracked. Those figures, when released, will indicate the full scale of Thursday's salvo.