North Korea launched multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea on Tuesday, South Korea's military said, in a provocation staged just days before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday stated that the Ukrainian security forces have captured two North Korean military personnel in the Kursk region amid the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
North Korea on Saturday lambasted a recent trilateral meeting between South Korea, the US and Japan that discussed peace in the Indo-Pacific region, deriding the talks as an "insult" to peace.
A Ukrainian media outlet has reported that about 500 North Korean soldiers were killed in a missile strike by Kyiv in Russia's western Kursk region.
The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said on Sunday that South Korea will have to pay a "dear price" for sending propaganda leaflets across the border the previous day.
Choe's remarks come after Pompeo on Tuesday said in a speech to American veterans that the North's "rogue behaviour could not be ignored" and the US has "galvanized global support to denuclearize North Korea".
"The test-fire proved that all the tactical and technological specifications of the system correctly reached the preset indexes."
Saturday's firings marked the seventh round of such launches since July 25 when the North broke a 17-month hiatus and started firing missiles and projectiles to test new weapons and protest the South-US joint military exercise that it has long denounced as a rehearsal for invasion.
The trilateral tension between the US, China and Russia will almost certainly escalate as it has over a welter of other issues.
The South Korean official's remarks came a day after Biegun said that the US was "prepared to engage as soon as we hear from our counterparts in North Korea", a position that the North does not appear to share.
