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North Korea test-fires 10 missiles as South Korea, U.S. stage war games
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North Korea test-fired 10 short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan at the weekend, five days after South Korea and its U.S. allies kicked off their annual spring war games.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said they detected the launches at around 1:20 p.m.
“Our military maintains a firm readiness posture while closely sharing North Korean ballistic missile information with the U.S. and Japanese sides amid a heightened surveillance posture against additional launches,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs said, per Yonhap News Agency, in a template statement.
The missiles splashed in the Sea of Japan, east of the peninsula.
For tests of ballistic missiles, Pyongyang follows common global protocols, firing them on a west-east trajectory so the Earth’s rotation grants them extra boost.
Experts say North Korea conducts test firings for two reasons. One is to gather technical data; one is to make political points.
Currently, North Korea is highly likely to be gathering data from live war. Since January, it has been firing tube and rocket artillery from Russia’s Kursk Oblast into Ukraine.
Saturday’s missile shoot followed angry rhetoric aimed at the annual “Freedom Shield” drills by Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Pyongyang insists that the exercises, which Washington calls “defensive in nature,” are actually practice for an invasion.
Ms. Kim warned, in a statement in state media on Tuesday, the day following the drills’ commencement, that they could “lead to terrible consequences that are unimaginable.”
Her fortunes rose in February at the once-every-five-years Workers Party Congress, where she was promoted director of the party’s General Affairs Department.
Though the powerful Ms. Kim, who frequently pens bylined columns on inter-Korean relations, warned that Freedom Shield “will further destroy regional stability,” life in South Korea continues as usual.
The population has long been immunized to North Korean threats, and all three actions — the start of spring military drills by the two allies, followed by the North’s response in the form of barrages of rhetoric and missiles — had been predicted.
Events follow the same course virtually every year, though this spring, the drills take place against the backdrop of an ongoing Israeli-U.S. aerial campaign against Iran.
Indo-Pacific-based U.S. assets — missile interceptors in South Korea and U.S. Marines in Okinawa — are currently redeploying to the Middle East, where Iran’s will to fight remains unbroken.
The redeployments have raised quiet concerns about the U.S. ability to fight a two-front war, and come at a time when a major power shift is underway in the defense of the Korean Peninsula.
The all-domain drills encompass both computer simulations and “Warrior Shield” field exercises. Some 18,000 troops are engaged, with training running from March 9 through March 19.
While the “Allies drill-North Korea responds angrily” scenario was predictable, a new dynamic is animating the war games this year.
The Spring 2026 drills are being used to stress-test South Korea’s domestic capabilities, notably in sophisticated areas such as long-range strike, command and control, and intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance.
The assessments, made by the U.S. side, are part of the planned conditions-based transfer of wartime operational control of South Korean troops from U.S. to South Korean command.
The Lee Jae-myung administration, which took office in summer 2025, has announced that it wants wartime “OPCON Transfer” to take place by the end of its term, 2030.
The concept has a long history, but current Seoul-Washington policy stances suggest it may, finally, happen.
OPCON transfer was first brokered by the liberal Roh Moo-hyun administration (2003-2008), which sought sovereign control of its own forces.
However, it was subsequently slow-walked by successive conservative administrations in Seoul, who feared it would greenlight reduced U.S. commitments to the peninsula.
As matters stand, Korean troops would fight under the orders of the Combined Forces Command, a joint structure led by an American four-star general, with a South Korean deputy.
Exactly how OPCON transfer — the exact conditions to be met have never been made fully public — would proceed, and what might happen to CFC if and when it does, is unclear. Whether U.S. troops would fight under Seoul’s wartime command is another concern that gives Korean conservatives the vapours.
Regardless, OPCON transfer’s stars are aligning on both sides of the Pacific.
In South Korea, the liberal Mr. Lee occupies the presidential Blue House, while his party comfortably controls the National Assembly. This leaves the conservative opposition largely impotent.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pressuring allies worldwide to increase defence spending and upgrade capabilities. It has made clear it wants Seoul to take an increasing share of the conventional defense burden, while sheltering Korea under the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
What is unknown is how far South Korea’s military is proceeding toward satisfying U.S.-set conditions.
“The main thing here is the conditions,” U.S. Forces Commanding General Xavier Brunson said during a webinar organized by the Korea Defense Veterans Association and the Korea-U.S. Alliance Foundation last December. “We cannot say we’re going to slide away from the conditions just so that we can get this done in time.”
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has become the first person in the world to get the “trillionaire” tag. Investor confidence in Musk’s businesses was on full display on Thursday when SpaceX, which deals in reusable rockets, satellites and artificial intelligence, secured a record USD 75 billion through its initial public offering, reported news agency Reuters.
Alongside electric-vehicle manufacturer Tesla, SpaceX sits at the heart of Musk’s business empire.
Before the share offering, Forbes estimated Musk’s net worth at around USD 780 billion, placing him comfortably ahead of the second-richest individual, Alphabet co-founder Larry Page.
Matt Durot, deputy editor at Forbes Wealth was quoted as saying by Reuters: “The second richest person has been hovering around $300 billion, so about less than one-third of what Musk can potentially be worth tomorrow.” “And only one other person, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has ever been worth USD 400 billion.”
Elon Musk’s major holdings
A major part of Musk’s wealth is now tied to SpaceX, where his stake is valued at roughly USD 866 billion. Combined with his holdings in Tesla and other ventures, Forbes estimates his net worth at USD 1.1 trillion once SpaceX shares began trading on Friday, according to Reuters calculations based on company filings.
Musk first rose to global prominence through Tesla and SpaceX before extending his influence further with the USD 44 billion purchase of Twitter (now X) in 2022, which gave him access to a massive online community and the chance to regulate the platform. In addition to Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has helped launch several other companies, including tunnel-construction venture The Boring Company and brain-implant developer Neuralink.
His growing involvement in politics has also generated controversy. Among the most debated episodes was his participation in US President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency last year. The political backlash coincided with low Tesla sales in several overseas markets during 2025, as the company faced protests and consumer boycotts.
The US and Iran have exchanged fire after President Donald Trump blamed Tehran for the downing of an American military helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz on Monday.
The US Central Command (Centcom) said it launched airstrikes at Iranian targets at 17:00 ET (21:00 GMT) on Tuesday and later said the operation was complete.
In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it launched strikes on two US bases in the region, one in Bahrain and the other in Jordan, while Kuwait’s army said it was also intercepting an attack.
The US has described its strikes as “a proportional response” for the Apache helicopter downing, while the IRGC described the attacks as “vicious”.
The exchange of fire comes after two crew members of the downed helicopter were rescued by an American sea drone on Monday, Centcom said. It was the first time the US military publicly confirmed that type of vessel was used in such an operation.
According to US officials, Iran used a drone to launch the attack on the helicopter. But it’s not clear whether the Iranian drone had deliberately attacked, an unnamed US official told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. The semi-official Mehr News Agency reported that Iran had not claimed responsibility for the downed aircraft.
In response, Centcom said US fighter jets “struck Iranian air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz”.
The IRGC said US strikes had damaged a telecommunications tower and two water tanks.
Iran said the US had targeted the cities of Jask and Sirik, and Qeshem – an island in the Gulf.
Centcom released the statement saying the mission was “completed” just over three hours after it announced an initial wave of strikes triggered by the downing of the US helicopter on Monday.
US officials are yet to comment on reports of attacks on its bases and it is unclear if there has been any damage. However, an air raid alert was issued in Bahrain, according to local authorities who said Iranian attacks had been repelled.
US President Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday the downed helicopter had been patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping channel that was effectively closed days after the US launched its first strikes on Iran in late February.
“There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”
In Washington, US House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was in the room with Trump when he decided that US attacks on Iran should resume.
“We lament that it became necessary,” said the top Republican in Congress, adding that “we’re gonna have to take care of this business”.
Iran’s foreign minister issued a threat to the US in the aftermath of the renewed US attacks, saying the country “will leave no attack or threat unanswered”.
“Despite its defeats on the battlefield, the US opted to test our determination,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X.
He added: “Leave our region if you want to be safe.”
Araghchi said on Tuesday that foreign forces near Iran’s territory were at “constant risk on account of their own human errors, plain accidents or potentially being caught in crossfire”.
“To reduce risk, best solution is for them [foreign forces] to leave,” the Iranian leader said in a post on X.
Minutes before Trump’s comments on the downed American Apache helicopte on Tuesday, Iran’s top negotiator in peace talks with Washington, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, took to social media to signal retaliation.
“We prefer the language of diplomacy, but we speak other languages far more fluently. Break your commitments, and we’ll switch to what we speak best.”
“You ride the horse you saddled!,” he wrote.
The flare-up between the US and Iran comes after Israeli forces carried out strikes across southern Lebanon on Tuesday.
Tehran had warned that Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon would trigger another wave of retaliatory strikes.
Israel and Iran halted attacks on each other after exchanging fire over the weekend for the first time since April’s truce.
Trump publicly told both countries to “immediately stop ‘shooting’” because they were jeopardising negotiations between Washington and Tehran on a deal to end the regional war.
He said on Truth Social that Israel and Iran are looking to do “an immediate ceasefire” but peace is “subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way”.
On Tuesday he also told journalists: “We’re in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal,” adding that it could take “two or three days” and the Strait of Hormuz would open immediately after.
US President Donald Trump abruptly walked out of an interview with NBC after being repeatedly challenged on several claims by the show’s presenter Kristen Welker.
During the interview, which aired on Sunday’s Meet The Press, the president claimed both the current primary elections in California and the 2020 presidential election were “rigged”.
When pressed for evidence on California’s vote by Welker, he said: “All I have to do is look, and I listen.”
After the presenter replied “that’s not evidence”, Trump accused the media of being “crooked”, before ending the interview: “Sorry, let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough.”
The president has had a fraught relationship with traditional media outlets, often accusing them of bias against him.
The interview, set in a barn as Trump appeared at an event with farmers in Wisconsin, was delayed repeatedly due to technical difficulties and rain hitting the metal roof. NBC reported that he walked out 50 minutes after sitting down for it on Friday.
Much of the interview involved Welker questioning Trump over the conflict with Iran, with him insisting the US needed to act to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and that it would not be “an endless war”.
“We’re there for a few months and the threat is largely over,” he said.
Around six minutes before he left the set, the pair discussed the “anti-weaponisation” fund, a now-dropped plan to create a $1.8bn (£1.3bn) fund to compensate individuals who claim they were unfairly targeted or investigated by the government.
The plan drew strong criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, who argued it could result in payments to people prosecuted over the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021.
The pair then moved onto discussing that riot, and Trump was challenged after he repeated his unsubstantiated claim that the 2020 election was rigged.
Trump turned to the California primary elections, where votes are still being counted to determine which two candidates in a series of races – including governor of the state – will be on the ballot in November’s midterm elections.
He said the results had not been called after four days, adding: “They’re cheating on the election.”
“Do you have evidence to support that?” Welker responded.
“All I have to do is look, and I listen,” the president replied.
“But that’s not evidence,” she interjected.
Full results have not yet been called in the state where delays are common due to a particularly meticulous vote-counting process and broad use of mail-in ballots. Mail-in voting has long irked the president.
“They’re crooked,” he continued, “just like you’re crooked.”
Welker said: “To be fair, I’m not crooked. But let’s continue.”
Trump then told Welker “you’re either crooked or you’re stupid”, and after a further exchange said: “Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you darling, have a good time.”
Welker attempted to continue the interview, but Trump interrupted: “I’ve sat in the rain with you for an hour, on and off in the rain, and I’ve given you enough time.
“You ought to straighten out your press, because you know what? A country can never be great with a dishonest press.”
He then gestured to people behind the camera, saying “come on, let’s go”, before standing up and walking off the set.
After the interview was broadcast, Welker said: “I spoke with President Trump on Saturday and we both acknowledged the complications during the interview posed by the rain. He agreed to sit down with me for another Meet the Press interview.”
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