North Korea has fired several missiles towards the Sea of Japan, South Korea’s military said, hours after Pyongyang denied allegations that it was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches were detected from the Sondok area on the country’s eastern coast on Wednesday. Authorities in South Korea and the United States were analysing the details.
The missile tests were North Korea’s fourth weapons launch in a month. They followed an announcement by the FBI attributing the Binance hack to North Korean hackers.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said hackers had taken more than $6 billion in what appeared to be the biggest cryptocurrency theft on record.
The FBI said the operation was carried out by a hacking group known as TraderTraitor, which it said was also behind a $1.5 billion attack on the Bybit exchange last year.
North Korea rejected the allegation on Tuesday, describing the FBI’s claim as “a trite provocation”. Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, later said the announcement reflected Washington’s “invariable hostile policy” towards Pyongyang.
She also ruled out talks with the United States unless Washington abandoned that policy.
“It is our clear stand that we have no need to sit face to face with such unreliable and hostile persons,” Kim said. “The choice for peace includes dialogue, of course, but this is not surely equated with national interests for us.”
US President Donald Trump said in August that he planned to meet Kim Jong Un later this year in an effort to revive the relationship he said he had developed with the North Korean leader during his first term.
Trump said it was important to “get along” with Kim and claimed North Korea had 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons. Previous talks between the two leaders ended abruptly in 2019 after disagreements over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
In October, the US, South Korea and Japan again called for the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula as North Korea stepped up its weapons testing.
Recent tests have included a submarine-launched ballistic missile, hypersonic missiles, attack drones and cluster bombs designed to be carried by ballistic missiles.
North Korean state media also reported that Kim Jong Un had visited a naval shipyard building a destroyer and had stressed the importance of maintaining a powerful navy.
