Seoul announced that North Korea launched several ballistic missiles on Saturday, following the conclusion of South Korea's five-day joint military exercises with the United States and Japan.
Last month, Pyongyang denounced the “Freedom Edge” maneuvers being conducted in international waters off South Korea, considering them a threat to it and other countries in the region.
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that Seoul detected on Saturday “the launch of several short-range ballistic missiles from the Wonsan area towards the East Sea,” also known as the Sea of Japan.
She added that the intelligence services of South Korea and the United States “exchanged information about it from the first stage of the launch, and also shared information related to... the missile with Japan.”
In August, Pyongyang launched a group of missiles towards the sea, a few hours after US President Donald Trump announced his intention to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year.
The launch coincided with South Korea and the United States holding a reduced version of their annual military exercises, “Ulchi Freedom Shield,” following an order from Trump to reduce them.
Trump's decision to reduce the maneuvers worried US allies in the region, especially since he described them as "inappropriate and hostile" towards North Korea.
But South Korean intelligence services told Parliament earlier this month that a summit between the United States and North Korea appeared possible “at any time,” with signs of dialogue emerging between them.
Trump met with Kim three times during his first term, in summits aimed at reaching a denuclearization agreement, but no tangible progress was made.
On Friday, China denounced the “logic of banditry” of the Deputy Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Michael Ellis, after he suggested that the agency was spying on it, ahead of an expected summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump this month.
Ellis hinted during a cybersecurity conference on Tuesday that Washington was carrying out extensive economic espionage operations in the face of the “threat” posed by Beijing. He believed that the “economic interdependence” between the two countries may give Beijing pressure cards on Washington, which should prompt the agency to “deal differently.”
The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Friday: “By explicitly declaring that Chinese companies constitute legitimate targets for espionage, the United States publicly exposed the theft of secrets that its intelligence services were secretly practicing, thereby demonstrating the logic of banditry and domination.”
She stressed, according to Agence France-Presse, that “Chinese technological progress” in the fields of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and others “should in no way be a target for espionage,” denouncing the “Cold War mentality.”
Ellis stressed the importance of “continuing to address traditional political and military issues, but we must also be able to collect intelligence information related to the economic and security aspects of this competition.” This requires knowing how to obtain and analyze this information.”
He referred to the fields of semiconductors and biotechnology as “intelligence targets.”
Trump announced that he would host his Chinese counterpart at the White House on September 24. It is expected that artificial intelligence will be one of the most prominent topics on the agenda of their talks.
