Il Nuovo Postiglione - North Korea announces missile test hours before Trump due in South

The sea-to-surface missiles were launched vertically on Tuesday from the Yellow Sea and flew for more than two hours, state news agency KCNA said.

Top military official Pak Jong Chon oversaw the test and said "important successes" were being achieved in developing the North's "nuclear forces" as a war deterrent, according to KCNA.

The test was aimed at assessing "the reliability of different strategic offensive means and impress their abilities upon the enemies", Pak said.

"It is our responsible mission and duty to ceaselessly toughen the nuclear combat posture," he added.

Notably absent from the test was leader Kim Jong Un, who typically oversees important missile launches.

Trump has said he would "love to meet" Kim this week as he makes his first visit to the Korean peninsula of his second term.

Kim has expressed openness to talks if the United States dropped its "delusional" demand that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons.

"The launch underscores Pyongyang's nuclear deterrence ahead of Trump's visit to the peninsula and again reinforces its message that denuclearization is off the table," Yang Moo-jin, a chair professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.

The two leaders last met in 2019 at the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the Cold War frontier that has separated North and South Korea for decades.

North Korea has yet to respond publicly to the invitation.

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, told AFP that Kim's absence was revealing.

"This is not an overt attempt to embarrass Trump," he said.

Kim was also not mentioned by KCNA in reporting of last week's test launch of several hypersonic missiles.

Q.Bernardi--INP