N Korea launches multiple missiles

Seoul : North Korea launched a series of what appeared to be "surface-to-ship" cruise missiles on Thursday, South Korea's defence ministry said, in what would be the latest in a string of tests in defiance of UN sanctions.

"North Korea fired multiple unidentified projectiles, assumed to be surface-to-ship missiles, this morning from the vicinity of Wonsan, Gangwon Province," the ministry said.

Seoul has stepped up surveillance against possible threats, it added. 

This would be the fourth missile test by the nuclear-armed regime in less than five weeks, as Pyongyang continues to defy UN warnings and US threats of possible military action.

The UN Security Council last Friday unanimously adopted a US-drafted resolution imposing new targeted sanctions on a handful of North Korean officials and entities, in response to a series of ballistic missile tests this year that are banned under UN resolutions.

However, North Korea on Sunday slammed the latest UN sanctions as "mean" and vowed to press ahead with its missile and nuclear weapons programmes.

Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies told AFP: "North Korea has been stepping up missile tests ... in order to project an image to the world that international sanctions can never bring it to its knees.

"It is also expressing displeasure of the arrival of a US nuclear submarine in South Korean".

The 6,900-ton USS Cheyenne, whose home port is Pearl Harbor, arrived in the South Korea port of Busan Tuesday.