The U.S. military said Thursday that it is aware of North Korean ballistic missile launches conducted this week, reaffirming America's commitment to the defense of its regional allies.

U.S. Pacific Command released a statement hours after Pyongyang fired a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan. The launches came amid an ongoing South Korea-U.S. military exercise that North Korea has decried as a rehearsal for war. North Korea has a long-documented pattern of conducting missile tests around allied drills, and its ballistic missile launches are banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions, which Pyongyang rejects as an infringement on its sovereignty.

"We are aware of the recent missile launches and are consulting closely with our allies and partners," the command said in its statement on the launches.

"Based on current assessments, these events do not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to our allies. The United States remains committed to the defense of the U.S. homeland and our allies in the region," it added.

The commitment cited by the command is anchored by the 1953 U.S.-South Korea mutual defense treaty and the roughly 28,500 American troops stationed in the South.

North Korea's latest missile launches took place even though U.S. President Donald Trump had ordered the scaling back of the ongoing allied exercise, a decision seen as a conciliatory gesture toward Pyongyang at a time when Trump is seeking to resume diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The two leaders previously held summits in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019, which ended without an agreement on denuclearization or sanctions relief.

Source: The Korea Times