North Korea fires around a dozen missiles as Seoul seeks talks

Seoul — North Korea fired around a dozen short-range ballistic missiles towards the sea on Thursday, South Korea's military said, a day after Seoul renewed its call for talks aimed at preventing accidental clashes along the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas.

The missiles were launched from the eastern coastal area of Wonsan at about 12.30pm local time and travelled around 250 kilometres, according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Euronews reported. Seoul said it had stepped up surveillance for further launches and was sharing information with the United States and Japan.

The launch came as Seoul presses Pyongyang to respond to a proposal, first made on 23 October, for military talks to jointly verify the location of the Military Demarcation Line, restore suspended communication channels and agree measures to prevent accidental clashes. Unification Minister Chung Dong-young renewed the appeal on Wednesday in an address read on his behalf at a forum in Goyang, near Seoul.

"South and North Korea should align their positions on the MDL through dialogue," Chung said, calling for communication channels to be restored so the border area could be managed peacefully.

North Korea has not responded to the proposal. The offer follows landmine explosions in the Demilitarised Zone on 21 September that injured three South Korean soldiers, two of them seriously. Seoul accused North Korean troops of planting the mines south of the demarcation line; Pyongyang denied responsibility and accused the South of fabricating the incident in a letter to the UN Security Council. The US-led United Nations Command said a joint investigation with South Korea had identified an active North Korean mine south of the line and determined that an armistice violation had occurred.

Seoul says North Korean troops have been reinforcing the border with roads, fences and landmines, repeatedly crossing the demarcation line during the work and prompting warning broadcasts and warning shots. Many of the boundary markers installed under the 1953 armistice have deteriorated or disappeared — only about 200 of the original 1,292 are still identifiable, according to the Yonhap news agency — leaving differing interpretations of where the line runs.

Direct military communication between the two Koreas remains suspended, though the UN Command maintains a separate channel with the North Korean military. The immediate test is whether Pyongyang answers Seoul's standing offer of talks — or whether further launches, which South Korea says it is now watching for, set the tempo instead.