“The United States condemns the launch of multiple ballistic missiles by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” a State Department spokesman said, using North Korea’s official name.

He called on “the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to refrain from further provocations and start a substantive and constructive dialogue.”

And the South Korean military announced earlier today that North Korea had fired three ballistic missiles into the East Sea, one of them intercontinental, in a series of tests Wednesday morning, the day after US President Joe Biden’s visit to the region.

“The first ballistic missile (proposed ICBM) had a range of about 360 km and an altitude of about 540 km,” the South Korean army chief of staff said in a statement. She added that the second ballistic missile “reached an altitude of 20 km and its trail disappeared”, while the third short-range ballistic missile traveled about 760 km at an altitude of about 60 km.