SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea fired about 10 unidentified ballistic missiles toward the sea of Japan Saturday, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, days after Pyongyang warned of “terrible consequences” over South Korea-United States military drills.

Pyongyang recently dashed hopes of a diplomatic thaw with South Korea, Washington’s security ally, describing its latest peace efforts as a “clumsy, deceptive farce.”

Seoul’s military detected “around ten unidentified ballistic missiles launched from the Sunan area in North Korea toward the East Sea at around 1:20 p.m.,” the JCS said in a statement.

Japan’s defense ministry also confirmed the launch, saying on its official X account that “what is possibly a ballistic missile was launched from North Korea.”

The announcement came hours after South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok said that US President Donald Trump thinks a meeting with Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un would be “good.”

Washington has for decades led efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program, but summits, sanctions and diplomatic pressure have had little impact.

The Trump administration has pushed in recent months to revive high-level talks with Pyongyang, eyeing a possible summit with Kim Jong Un this year, potentially during Trump’s April visit to Beijing.

Seoul’s Kim, who met Trump in Washington, said the US president told him that meeting Kim Jong Un would be “good” and the meeting could potentially happen during Trump’s visit to Beijing that begins later in March.

Trump said during a trip to Asia in October that he was “100 percent” open to meeting with Kim Jong Un, a remark that went unanswered by the North.

After largely ignoring those overtures for months, Kim Jong Un recently said that the two nations could “get along” if Washington accepted Pyongyang’s nuclear status.