North Korea fires multiple ballistic missiles, one flies over 900 km, days after Seoul's hypersonic test

North Korea fired several ballistic missiles from the Pyongyang area into the sea off its east coast on Monday 12 October 2026, and at least one of them flew more than 900 km, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, Al Jazeera reported. The JCS did not say how many missiles it detected. CBS News also reported the launches.

Japan's coastguard said North Korea fired two unidentified projectiles believed to be ballistic missiles, and that they appeared to have already come down.

Why now

JCS spokesperson Jang Do-young said the launch "appears to be a show of force" after South Korea's own hypersonic missile test. On Thursday 9 October, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung oversaw his country's first hypersonic missile test-firing; his office said the weapon would improve South Korea's ability to strike key targets by surprise.

North Korea had itself tested a hypersonic intermediate-range missile on 3 October, a weapon designed to slip past missile defences in South Korea and Japan.

The timeline so far

What Seoul and Pyongyang are saying

South Korea's presidential office said the repeated launches violate UN Security Council resolutions and called for an immediate halt. Tension had already risen after a landmine blast in the Demilitarised Zone wounded three South Korean soldiers; a joint South Korean and UN investigation concluded that North Korean forces planted two mines about a year earlier, which Pyongyang denies.

Before the blast, Seoul said it was trying to help restart talks between Pyongyang and Washington. Kim Jong Un has rejected US and South Korean offers so far and insists that the US drop its demand for denuclearisation. His summit diplomacy with Donald Trump ended abruptly in 2019.

What it means for Pakistan

There is no direct effect on Pakistan, which has no flights or large expatriate community in North Korea. Markets usually shrug off North Korean launches unless they bring a wider crisis; gold, which investors buy when tension rises, was at Rs436,299 a tola for 24 karat in Pakistan on Monday morning, up Rs914 on Sunday's rate, on our gold rate page. Convert tola, grams and ounces with the gold converter.

Correction, 12 October 2026: an earlier version said the 24 karat gold rate was down Rs530; that compared it with an earlier reading on Monday. Against Sunday's rate it is up Rs914.