Apology refused, missile launched: North Korea fires ballistic missile a day after rejecting Seoul's demand

North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the sea off its east coast on Saturday morning, South Korea and Japan said — a launch that came barely a day after Pyongyang's Kim Yo-jong dismissed Seoul's demand for an apology over landmines that seriously wounded South Korean soldiers in the Demilitarised Zone. The missile was launched from the Wonsan area at around 6.30 a.m. local time and flew more than 700 kilometres into the East Sea, the South Korean military said in a statement. Seoul and Washington are analysing the test for details. Japan's coast guard, citing the defence ministry, said the object may have been a ballistic missile and warned ships to take precautions. South Korea's presidential office convened an emergency National Security Council meeting on Saturday. The Blue House said North Korea's repeated launches "not only violate United Nations Security Council resolutions but also do not contribute to managing the current situation" and urged an immediate halt. The military said it had raised surveillance for further launches and would share intelligence with the United States and Japan. The timing was no accident. Earlier this week, South Korea said North Korean mines caused a blast that seriously injured two South Korean soldiers on a reconnaissance mission inside the 4-km-wide border strip. Seoul demanded an apology. Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, rejected the demand outright on Friday and poured scorn on President Lee Jae-myung's Armed Forces Day speech promising practical measures to reduce military tensions, calling it "the height of absurdity" and declaring Pyongyang would not allow "any trivial space" for engagement with the South. It is North Korea's 11th-plus missile test this year. Some have followed its protests against joint Seoul–Washington military drills. In recent years Pyongyang has sharply ramped up hostility, disavowing unification as a national goal and formally naming the South its "primary foe". For The Justice, the ledger matters: every missile is a choice. A state that cannot feed its people can still fuel its rockets, and a peninsula that needs de-escalation keeps getting demonstrations of force instead. The soldiers wounded by the mines, the fishermen warned to take precautions, the ordinary Koreans on both sides who pay for other people's brinkmanship — none of them voted for this.