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By Joyce Lee and Kaori Kaneko
SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea fired at least seven short-range ballistic missiles on Tuesday off its east coast, Japan's defence minister said, soon after Pyongyang condemned military drills by its rivals and just hours before the U.S. election.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister condemned the drills involving the United States, Japan and South Korea, in a report published on state media KCNA.
At least seven missiles flew to an altitude of 100 km (62 miles) and covered a range of 400 km before falling outside Japan's exclusive economic zone into the ocean, Japan's Defence Minister Gen Nakatani said.
They were fired at around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday (2230 GMT on Monday) from the vicinity of Sariwon, North Hwanghae Province, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The United States was consulting closely with South Korea, Japan and other regional allies after the launches, and continued to monitor the situation, the U.S. military said.
The latest launch follows North Korea's test last week of a huge new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile dubbed Hwasong-19, and comes hours before voting opens in the U.S. presidential election.
"If the ICBM was meant for the U.S., the latest ballistic missiles are for South Korea," said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
"Directly, it is to protest the joint air drills by South Korea, U.S. and Japan. Indirectly it is to show off their presence last minute before the U.S. presidential election," said Yang, who also saw the intent as to deflect the international community's attention away from criticising the dispatch of North Korean troops to Russia.
North Korean state media KCNA on Tuesday said Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, condemned the recent military drills by the United States, Japan and South Korea as threats and said they justify North Korea's nuclear reinforcement.
The missile launch also came after Russian President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly met North Korea's foreign minister Choe Son Hui on Monday.
During Putin's surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Choe, the pair shook hands for a full minute at a time of mounting concern in the West that North Korean soldiers are about to enter the Ukraine war on Moscow's side.
On Monday, the U.S. also called out Russia and China at the U.N. Security Council for "shamelessly protecting" and emboldening North Korea to further violate U.N. sanctions by advancing its ballistic missile, nuclear, and weapons of mass destruction programmes.
South Korean Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun noted late last month that North Korea "would want to exaggerate their existence around the season of the U.S. presidential election before and after the election" by show of force such as an intercontinental missile test or another nuclear test.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee and Hyonhee Shin in Seoul, Kaori Kaneko and Kantaro Komiya in Tokyo; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Sandra Maler, Ed Davies and Himani Sarkar)
