C T Online Desk: Air raid sirens sounded in South Korea after the North fired about a dozen missiles in its direction Wednesday, at least one of them landing near the rivals’ tense sea border.
The launches came hours after North Korea threatened to use nuclear weapons to get the U.S. and South Korea to “pay the most horrible price in history” as it has intensified its fiery rhetoric targeting the ongoing large-scale military drills between its rivals.
South Korea’s military said North Korea launched more than 10 missiles of various kinds off its eastern and western coasts.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement earlier Wednesday that it detected three short-range ballistic missiles fired the North’s eastern coastal town of Wonsan. It said one of the missiles landed 26 kilometers (16 miles) away from the rivals’ sea border.
The landing site is in international waters, but still far south of the extension of the nations’ border. South Korea’s military said it was the first time a North Korean missile had landed so close to the sea border since the countries’ division in 1948.
In 2010, North Korea launched artillery shells on a frontline South Korean island and allegedly torpedoed a South Korean navy ship, both off the peninsula’s western coast, killing a total of 50 people.
“This is very unprecedented and we will never tolerate it,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a separate statement.
The North Korean missile’s landing site is also 167 kilometers (104 miles) northwest of South Korea’s Ulleung island, where an air raid alert was then issued.
