The launch comes at a sensitive diplomatic moment, as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung departs for China for talks with President Xi Jinping. It also coincides with heightened global tensions following US President Donald Trump’s announcement that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro had been captured during a large-scale US military operation.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launches from an area near Pyongyang at around 7:50 a.m., according to Yonhap News Agency.

“Our military maintains a firm readiness posture while closely sharing North Korean ballistic missile information with the US and Japan amid heightened surveillance against possible additional launches,” the JCS said in a statement.

North Korea last fired a short-range ballistic missile toward the East Sea on November 7, marking its sixth ballistic missile launch of 2025.

A geopolitics expert said the latest test may have been intended as a signal of defiance in response to recent US military actions.

“The US strike in Venezuela and the capture of President Maduro may have sent a powerful message to Kim Jong Un—one of existential threat—and could reinforce Pyongyang’s justification for adhering to its nuclear weapons programme,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, told Yonhap.