North Korea fired several missiles into the Sea of Japan on Wednesday, South Korea's military reported, hours after Pyongyang denied involvement in the theft of more than $6 billion in cryptocurrency assets from Binance.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the launches from the Sondok area on North Korea's eastern coast. Authorities in South Korea and the United States were said to be analysing the details of the launches.
The tests marked Pyongyang's fourth weapons launch in a month.
They came a day after North Korea dismissed an FBI announcement attributing the Binance hack to North Korean hackers, calling it "a trite provocation."
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, disclosed last Friday that hackers had stolen more than $6 billion in what appears to be the largest cryptocurrency heist on record.
The FBI attributed the theft to a hacking group known as TraderTraitor, which it also linked to a $1.5 billion hack of the Bybit exchange the previous year.
Early on Wednesday, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said Pyongyang viewed the FBI announcement as "an extension of Washington's invariable hostile policy toward" North Korea.
She ruled out dialogue with Washington unless the United States abandoned that policy.
"It is our clear stand that we have no need to sit face to face with such unreliable and hostile persons," she said. "The choice for peace includes dialogue, of course, but this is not surely equated with national interests for us."
US President Donald Trump said in August that he plans to meet Kim Jong Un later this year, seeking to revive ties he claims to have established with the North Korean leader during his first term. Trump described Kim as having 57 "very powerful" nuclear weapons and said it was important to "get along" with him.
Previous talks between the two leaders in 2019 collapsed amid disagreements over North Korea's nuclear programme. In October, the United States, South Korea and Japan jointly reiterated their call for the "complete denuclearisation" of the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea has accelerated its weapons testing this year, a trend analysts say is likely aimed at increasing Pyongyang's leverage ahead of any future diplomacy with Washington.
Recent tests have included a submarine-launched ballistic missile, hypersonic missiles, attack drones, and cluster bombs designed to be carried by ballistic missiles.
On Tuesday, Pyongyang announced it had tested a new cluster warhead for strategic cruise missiles the previous day, claiming it could destroy an area of five to six hectares with what it described as "high-density power."
The latest launches followed a North Korean state media report that Kim Jong Un had visited a naval shipyard constructing a destroyer, where he emphasised the importance of building a powerful navy.
