North Korea has fired two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan which it says can carry nuclear weapons North Korean State media showed these images of the launches they came two days after Pyongyang resumed missile testing by firing an intercontinental ballistic missile it says it's trying to deter the U.S and Seoul from holding annual military exercises next month I've been speaking to Dr Daniel Pinkston who's an international relations lecturer based in Seoul and I asked him how he viewed these latest North Korean launchers well I think both sides were trying to demonstrate or signal their ability to respond very quickly so the ICBM launch on Saturday create time was executed on about nine hours notice according to the the press report so after Kim Jong-un gave the notice they were able to launch that uh missile and it could reach basically anywhere in the world and then the South Koreans in the U.S responded with an air exercise then following day also showing that they could respond very quickly the U.S flew uh B1 bombers which can launch conventional payloads against targets and then this morning uh North Korea did the um uh 600 milliliter kn25 so-called kn25 multiple rocket launcher systems which are capable of carrying uh tactical nuclear weapons it Targets in South Korea right so there's a lot going on and it sounds potentially very dangerous the tension is obviously very high the fact that these uh military exercises between the U.S and South Korea are planned to go ahead and next next month how much does that make more of this much more likely over the fourth coming weeks until then well actually I feel more relaxed with the exercises taking place we're resuming a normal exercise Tempo after five years of efforts for diplomacy and then because of covid now the exercises will resume in their regular scale but also with the deployment of uh more strategic capabilities because of what North Korea has been doing uh with its nuclear program and its missile program so we're a long ways from uh the Armistice collapsing or returning to wartime conditions we heard a lot of rhetoric uh this morning from Kim yo Jung who's Kim jong-un's younger sister but we don't see the mobilization of Reserve forces or moving weapon systems out to their uh battle positions standing up of the National Defense commission which uh excuse me National Defense committee which the uh Kim Jong-un would do in Wartime there's no alerts or mobilizations so I think we're a long ways from that but the North Koreans are very unhappy about the exercises because it comes at the time when the kPa the Korean People's Army is mobilized for spring planting and these exercises will disrupt that Dr Daniel Pinkston.