North Korea issued a maritime exclusion alert on its northeastern coast earlier this week, South Korean military confirmed that they are conducting a missile test.

The alert was issued and was in effect between August 15 and 16, the latter day on which the armies of South Korea and the United States began their summer maneuvers, which once again have unleashed harsh criticism from the North Korean regime.

North Korea usually issues these alerts to ships before launching missiles to avoid navigating in areas where the projectiles will potentially fall into the water, although in this case there was no launch, as confirmed to Efe a spokesman for the southern Ministry of National Defense.

This spokesperson did not confirm the issuance of said navigation alert but did confirm that “North Korea is carrying out summer maneuvers” so that both Seoul and Washington “are closely monitoring the situation.”

In any case, US troops flew an E-8 surveillance plane over the Korean peninsula on August 16, according to air tracking websites, with the apparent intention of tracking the movements of North Korean strategic forces.

North Korea usually carries out its summer exercises around the same dates that the South and the United States usually do, and on many occasions it has also responded with missile launches, something that many consider that it can happen this year.

Especially after Pyongyang harshly criticized last week that Seoul decided to go ahead with its maneuvers after the regime agreed to reuse telematics lines between the two Koreas after more than a year without cross-border communication.

Since then, North Korea has not responded to phone calls from the South.

Pyongyang sees the joint exercises between Seoul and Washington as a test to invade their territory.

This year, the joint maneuvers consist in any case of a command post exercise that is carried out by means of a computer simulation that does not include movements of troops abroad and also includes a smaller number of troops due to the pandemic.

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