Photo/Illutration In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivers a speech during a year-end plenary meeting of the ruling Workers' Party, which was held between Dec. 26, and Dec. 30, 2023, in Pyongyang, North Korea. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

SEOUL--South Korea’s military says North Korea fired several cruise missiles into waters off its western coast, adding to a provocative run of weapons demonstrations in the face of deepening nuclear tensions with the United States, South Korea and Japan.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday that the U.S. and South Korean militaries were analyzing the launches. It did not immediately confirm the exact number of missiles fired or their specific flight details.

The launches marked North Korea’s second known launch event of the year, following a Jan. 14 flight test-firing of the country’s first solid-fuel intermediate range ballistic missile, which reflected its efforts to advance its lineup of weapons targeting U.S. military bases in Japan and Guam.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have increased in recent months as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues to accelerate his weapons development and issue provocative threats of nuclear conflict with the United States and its Asian allies. The U.S., South Korea and Japan in response have been expanding their combined military exercises, which Kim portrays as invasion rehearsals, and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around nuclear-capable U.S. assets.

In the latest tit-for-tat, North Korea said last week that it conducted a test of a purported nuclear-capable underwater attack drone in response to a combined naval exercise by the United States, South Korea and Japan, as it blamed its rivals for tensions in the region.

Cruise missiles are among a broad range of weapons North Korea has been testing in recent years as it attempts to build a viable nuclear threat against the United States and its Asian allies.

Since 2021, the North has conducted several flight tests of what it describes as long-range cruise missiles, which it claims are capable of striking targets 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away, a distance putting nearly all of Japan and U.S. military installations there within reach. The North has described those weapons as “strategic,” communicating an intent to arm them with nuclear weapons.

While North Korean cruise missile activities aren’t directly banned under U.N. sanctions, experts say those weapons potentially pose a serious threat to South Korea and Japan, as they are designed to fly like small airplanes and travel along landscape that would make them harder to detect by radar.

There are concerns that North Korea would dial up tensions in a U.S. election year. Experts say the North would aim to increase its bargaining power as it plans for eventual negotiations with whoever wins the November presidential vote.

North Korea also has a long history of ramping up pressure on rival South Korea when it doesn’t get what it wants from Washington. At Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament last week, Kim declared that North Korea is abandoning its long-standing goal of a peaceful unification with the South and ordered the rewriting of the North’s constitution to cement its war-divided rival as its most hostile foreign adversary. He accused South Korea of acting as “top-class stooges” of the Americans and repeated a threat that he would use his nukes to annihilate the South if provoked.

Analysts say North Korea could be aiming to diminish South Korea’s voice in the regional nuclear standoff and eventually force direct dealings with Washington as it looks to cement its nuclear status.

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