SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea launched two projectiles off its east coast on Thursday, its first such tests since a new effort at talks with the United States stalled over the terms of ending its nuclear weapons program.
The projectiles were fired from Pyongannam-do, a province surrounding Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and they landed in waters between North Korea and Japan, the South Korean military said in a statement.
South Korean defense officials said they were studying the flight paths to determine what type of weapons the projectiles were, although Japan’s Ministry of Defense said that they appeared to be ballistic missiles. South Korean officials also did not immediately say how far the projectiles flew or whether the tests were successful.
The projectiles were the first such weapons that North Korea has tested since the country fired its Pukguksong-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile on Oct. 2 into waters off Japan. It was the 12th time since early May that the North has tested ballistic missiles or other projectiles.
The missile launched on Oct. 2 landed within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, a provocative challenge to a key United States ally. Japan’s military said it did not appear that the projectiles tested on Thursday reached that zone.
The launchings could be an effort by North Korea to prod the United States to get back to serious negotiations over its weapons program as it seeks relief from crippling sanctions.
After the most recent talks, held in Stockholm, ended without progress on Oct. 5, the North said that it had no desire to engage in “sickening negotiations” with the United States anymore, rejecting Washington’s suggestion that negotiators from both countries meet again in Stockholm in two weeks.
Its Foreign Ministry said that it would not meet with American negotiators again until after Washington took “a substantial step” to “complete and irreversible withdrawal of hostile policy.”
The Stockholm meeting was an effort to resume denuclearization talks that had stalled since the collapse of the second summit meeting between Mr. Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February.
That meeting foundered on disagreements about how fast and how thoroughly the North should dismantle its nuclear program and how soon the United States would ease its sanctions.
Mr. Trump has played down the recent North Korean tests as “small ones” involving short-range ballistic missiles, although any test of ballistic missile technology by the North violates United Nations Security Council resolutions. The Pukguksong-3 launched early this month was considered a medium-range ballistic missile.
In a speech in April, Mr. Kim said he would wait only until the end of the year for Washington to come up with a more flexible proposal.
North Korea has since issued vague warnings that it might end a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests. Mr. Trump has cited that pause as one of his biggest gains in his on-again, off-again diplomacy with the North.