North Korea carried out a coordinated live-fire exercise on Saturday involving attack drones, tactical cruise missiles, tactical ballistic missiles and rocket launchers, shortly after the US, South Korea and Japan concluded their Freedom Edge military exercise.
Pyongyang said on Monday that the drill, conducted by five army units, demonstrated “huge destructive power” and practised the operation of an integrated weapons control system. The Korean Central News Agency, the state news agency known as KCNA, described the exercise as a test of coordinated firepower across several weapons systems.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several missiles were fired on Saturday and travelled about 250 kilometers into North Korea’s eastern waters. North Korea appears to have used ballistic missiles from its Hwasong-11 series and also fired rounds from 600-millimeter multiple rocket launchers.
The launches were North Korea’s first public ballistic missile firings in about three weeks. They were believed to be the country’s 13th known ballistic missile launch event in 2026.
Marshal Pak Jong Chon said the drill was intended to “improve the level of specialization to bring down the enemy's armed forces organizationally and structurally once an order is issued”. North Korea appeared to be showing how drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and rocket artillery could be coordinated through a unified command-and-control system.
The exercise followed Freedom Edge, a five-day trilateral programme of joint training across air, sea and cyber domains involving the US, South Korea and Japan. North Korea has previously answered allied military activity with weapons launches, including more than 10 short-range missiles last month during separate US-South Korea exercises.
The timing of the latest firing drill placed it close to the end of the allied exercises, while Pyongyang’s official account presented it as a “technical and practical military exercise”. KCNA released its report on Monday instead of immediately after the drill. Kim Jong Un was absent from the event.
Lim Eul-chul of Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies said the operation was “not a test of a single weapon system but a demonstration of an integrated strike network”. The exercise offered a display of coordinated strike capability, though the extent of North Korea’s command-and-control capacity beyond the systems shown remains unclear.
It is also unclear whether the drill signals a change in North Korea’s military posture or diplomatic approach towards the US. The US under Trump has scaled back joint drills with South Korea as part of efforts to resume diplomacy with North Korea. In August, Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” a major bilateral military exercise with South Korea.
North Korea has said the US must drop its “hostile policy” and recognise the North’s nuclear status. The US Pacific Command said Saturday’s launches did not pose an immediate threat to American territory or regional allies.
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