N. Korea May Have Alarming New Capability

North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the sea Wednesday, South Korea's military said, in a display of its expanding military capabilities hours after saying it would resume nuclear diplomacy with the US this weekend. South Korean officials said the missile was fired from North Korea's eastern waters, suggesting it may have been submarine-launched. But South Korean defense officials won't officially disclose whether the missile was fired from a submarine, a barge, or any other possible platform. North Korea having the ability to launch missiles from submarines would be alarming because such weapons are harder to detect in advance, the AP reports.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga earlier said the North fired two ballistic missiles from the country's east coast, and one of them appeared to have landed inside Japan's exclusive economic zone. The North had not fired a weapon that reached inside Japan's EEZ since Nov. 2017 at the height of an unusually provocative run in nuclear and missile tests. The launches, which were the North's ninth round of weapons tests since late July, came hours after a senior North Korean diplomat said North Korea and the United States have agreed to resume working-level nuclear negotiations this weekend.

(More North Korea stories.)