SEOUL: North Korea fired two ballistic missiles on Thursday as it claimed that its recent blitz of sanctions-busting tests were necessary countermeasures against joint military drills by the United States and South Korea.

As the United Nations Security Council met to discuss Pyongyang’s Tuesday launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan, North Korea blamed Washington for “escalating the military tensions on the Korean peninsula.”

The recent launches — six in less than two weeks — were “the just counteraction measures of the Korean People’s Army on South Korea-US joint drills,” Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have ramped up joint military drills in recent weeks, including large-scale naval maneuvers and anti-submarine exercises.

The US will redeploy the nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan to waters east of South Korea for a second visit in less than a month, Seoul said on Wednesday.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency that this posed “a serious threat to the stability of the situation on the Korean peninsula.”

Early on Thursday, South Korea’s military said it had detected two short-range ballistic missiles launched from the Samsok area in Pyongyang toward the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan.

The first missile traveled 350 kilometers (217 miles) at a maximum altitude of about 80 km, according to the military’s analysis, with the second flying 800 km at an altitude of 60 km.

It appears to be the first time North Korea has fired missiles from Samsok, an official from Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters.

He said they looked like a “different type of short-range ballistic missiles” from previous launches.

Tokyo also confirmed the launches, with Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada telling reporters that it was important not to “overlook the significant improvement of (North Korea’s) missile technology.”

Pyongyang’s Tuesday firing of what officials and analysts said was a Hwasong-12 that traveled likely the longest horizontal distance of any North Korean test, prompted the US to call for the emergency Security Council meeting.

At the meeting, China, North Korea’s longtime ally and economic benefactor, also blamed the US for provoking the spate of launches by Kim Jong Un’s regime.

Deputy Chinese Ambassador to the UN Geng Shuang said North Korea’s recent launches were “closely related” to military exercises in the region conducted by Washington and its allies.

He accused the US of “poisoning the regional security environment.”

The spate of launches is part of a record year of weapons tests by the isolated North, which Kim has declared an “irreversible” nuclear power, effectively ending the possibility of denuclearization talks.

US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for “strengthening” existing sanctions on North Korea, something China and Russia vetoed in May.

The council has been divided on responding to Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions for months, with Moscow and Beijing on the sympathetic side and the rest of the council pushing for punishment.

Analysts say Pyongyang has seized the opportunity of stalemate at the UN to conduct ever more provocative weapons tests.

Officials in Seoul and Washington have been warning for months that Pyongyang would conduct another nuclear test, likely after China’s Communist Party Congress on October 16.

“At this point, for Kim to turn back and halt provocations would seem counterproductive to his interests, not to mention the amount of resources squandered to conduct these weapons tests,” Soo Kim, an analyst at the Rand Corp., told Agence FrancePresse (AFP).

“We are indeed in a cycle of weapons provocations. What’s left, essentially, is an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) test and potentially the long-awaited seventh nuclear test,” Kim said.