North Korea fires 23 missiles; one lands near South Korea’s waters

North Korea fires at least 23 missiles, including one that landed close to South Korea’s waters in what President Yoon Suk-yeol says is “effectively a territorial invasion.”

It also fires an artillery barrage into a maritime “buffer zone,” in what experts said was part of an “aggressive and threatening” response by Pyongyang to the large-scale joint air drills the United States and South Korea are currently conducting.

One short-range ballistic missile crossed the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border, prompting a rare warning for residents on the island of Ulleungdo to seek shelter in bunkers.

Seoul’s military says it was the “first time since the peninsula was divided” at the end of Korean War hostilities in 1953 that a North Korean missile had landed so close to the South’s territorial waters.