Afp, Seoul

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un says the country’s latest missile launches were a warning to Washington and Seoul over their joint war games, state news agency KCNA reported yesterday, as tensions rise on the Korean peninsula.

The latest launch by the nuclear-armed North came after the South Korean and US militaries began mainly computer-simulated joint exercises on Monday to test Seoul’s ability to take operational control in wartime.

Those drills are taking place despite Pyongyang’s warnings that the exercises would jeopardise nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea.

KCNA said Kim had watched the launches early Tuesday, which verified the “war capacity” of the “new-type tactical guided missiles”.

With the launches carried out satisfactorily, “Kim Jong Un noted that the said military action would be an occasion to send an adequate warning to the joint military drill now underway by the US and South Korean authorities,” KCNA said.

Pyongyang on Tuesday fired two projectiles that “are assumed to be short-range ballistic missiles” into the sea, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier.

The latest weapons tests were the fourth pair of projectiles fired in less than two weeks, and the North has threatened more.

US President Donald Trump said yesterday his administration is in talks with South Korea to pay “substantially more” for protection against North Korea, with tensions rising on the Korean peninsula.

“Over the past many decades, the U.S. has been paid very little by South Korea, but last year, at the request of President Trump, South Korea paid $990,000,000,” Trump posted on Twitter.

Trump last week downplayed the North’s launches, saying Kim would not want to “disappoint” him.

Trump and Kim held a historic summit in Singapore last year, where the North made a vague pledge on denuclearisation.

A second summit in Hanoi this February broke up amid disagreements over sanctions relief and what Pyongyang might be willing to give up in return.