North Korea Fires Missiles Again in Response to South Korea's Hypersonic Test; U.S. Hostile Policy Toward Pyongyang Emerges as Main Obstacle to Peace Talks

North Korea launched multiple ballistic missiles from the Pyongyang area toward the eastern sea on Monday. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said at least one flew more than 900 kilometers but did not specify the exact number of launches. According to Al Jazeera, Japanese Deputy Defense Minister Koyanagi Ryu said at least two missiles lifted off 17 minutes apart, the first flying about 220 kilometers and the second more than 910 kilometers along an unusual trajectory; Japan initially assessed the latter may have been a hypersonic weapon. Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson Jang Do-young said the move was a "show of force" by North Korea days after South Korea tested a hypersonic weapon. South Korea's presidential office said North Korea's repeated tests violate UN Security Council resolutions and called for an immediate halt. North Korea's official statement on the launch has not yet been made public.

North Korea's move came less than a week after South Korean President Lee Jae-myung personally supervised South Korea's first publicly disclosed hypersonic missile test on Thursday of last week. Earlier this month on the 3rd, North Korea also test-fired what it described as a hypersonic medium-range missile capable of evading South Korean and Japanese missile defense systems. Lee Jae-myung's office claimed that once South Korea's hypersonic weapon is fully developed, it will enhance its ability to carry out surprise strikes against key targets in the "Korean Peninsula theater of operations." Both Seoul and Pyongyang are bolstering their strike capabilities with hypersonic weapons while characterizing the other's comparable advances as threats to themselves.

The immediate trigger also includes the border landmine incident. According to Al Jazeera, South Korea last week demanded that North Korea apologize for a landmine explosion in the Demilitarized Zone that injured three South Korean soldiers; a joint South Korean-UN investigation concluded that the mines had been planted by the North about a year earlier. Pyongyang denied this and accused South Korea of provocation. As North Korea test-fired missiles again on Monday, hostility between the two Koreas on border issues continues to escalate.

The deeper stalemate points to Washington. After negotiations between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump broke down abruptly in 2019, Pyongyang has consistently demanded that Washington abandon its "hostile policy" and scrap the framework requiring denuclearization as a precondition for dialogue. Lee Jae-myung, who took office in 2025, pledged to reopen dialogue. Before the landmine incident, Seoul was reportedly coordinating with Washington to facilitate North Korea-U.S. contact. As long as Washington continues to treat denuclearization as a precondition for dialogue, Pyongyang regards these conditions themselves as an extension of the "hostile policy," keeping the political window for resuming dialogue firmly shut.