SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired a barrage of missiles into the Sea of Japan at roughly the same time midterm polling stations were closing across America, then hammered home its message with an angry statement from a regime VIP.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, which monitor North Korea’s missile tests, did not state the exact time of the launches, but announced them at just after 7 p.m. Washington time on Tuesday.
The timing indicates the launches were aimed at prime time on the most important date on 2026’s U.S. political calendar.
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An informed observer in Seoul suggested that the timing of the latest launches indicated a message for America, rather than a test of domestic systems.
“It was definitely a message — probably a message to [U.S. President Donald] Trump — but I don’t know what the message was,” said Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean general.
He added, “They were probably baiting us.”
A different kind of message was sent the same day: A statement from a regime power player carried in state media.
It was oddly equivocal about new talks with Washington — talks frozen since 2019 — while slamming recent U.S. accusations of North Korean cyber theft.
“The choice for peace includes dialogue, of course, but this is not surely equated with national interests for us,” Kim Yo Jong, the sister of national leader Kim Jong-un and a tier-1 regime spokesperson, said in the statement.
Ms. Kim also, for the second time in just two days, attacked accusations made Saturday by the FBI that North Korean hackers stole some $6 billion from cryptocurrency exchange Binance, claiming they represented belligerent U.S. policy.
“The so-called ’cryptocurrency hacking case by [North Korea] is no more than a tip of an iceberg that shows the essence of the U.S. hostile policy toward [North Korea],” she fumed.
Ms. Kim has attended key summits between her brother and foreign leaders, and is widely considered a close confidant. Her official position, director of the General Affairs Department, makes her the party’s de facto communications gatekeeper to Mr. Kim.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly signaled his interest in re-opening his unprecedented 2018-2019 talks with Mr. Kim, most recently in connection with the alleged Binance hack.
There has been speculation that Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim could meet on the sidelines of the upcoming Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders Summit set for Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18-19.
However, Pyongyang, which has significantly upgraded its ties with both China and Russia in the years since the last Kim-Trump summit, has less need to conduct diplomacy with Washington than was the case in 2019.
It has not formally responded to Mr. Trump’s frequent, but unofficial, statements of interest.
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