North Korea fires 10 missiles day after Trump curtails South Korea joint drills

Launches, detected by South Korea and Japan, came after US scaled back exercises with South Korea in apparent overture to Kim Jong-un North Korea has launched about 10 short-range ballistic missiles towards the sea, South Korea’s military said, a day after Pyongyang shrugged off Donald Trump’s order to scale back US military drills with South Korea in an apparent attempt to resume diplomacy. The joint chiefs of staff said the missiles were launched from the region of Pyongyang at around 5pm (08.00 GMT) on Thursday towards North Korea’s eastern waters. The military said South Korea had bolstered its surveillance and was closely coordinating information on the launches with the US and Japan. South Korea’s presidential national security council held an emergency meeting, after which it issued a statement urging North Korea to halt ballistic missile launches, which are banned under UN security council resolutions. The Japanese prime minister’s office said earlier that it had detected a suspected missile launch. On Wednesday, the South Korean and US militaries said they were scaling back their 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises. Donald Trump had ordered the Pentagon to “substantially