North Korea Launches Projectile as Country’s Envoy Speaks at U.N.

SEOUL — North Korea fired an unidentified projectile off its east coast on Tuesday, the South Korean military said, just as the North’s ambassador to the United Nations called on the United States to end joint military exercises and withdraw its strategic weapons from around the Korean Peninsula.

The South Korean military said its officials and American military intelligence analysts were studying the trajectory and other flight data of the North Korean projectile to help determine what it was. When North Korea conducts tests of missiles, South Korea initially calls them “unidentified projectiles” before they release more details of the tests.

North Korea conducted its last missile tests on Sept. 15, when it launched two ballistic missiles in violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions banning the country from developing or testing ballistic missiles or nuclear devices.

The launching of the projectile on Tuesday morning came three days after the sister of Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, said on Saturday that the country would consider holding a summit meeting with South Korea and declaring an official end to the Korean War if the South can restore trust with Pyongyang.

The statement from the sister, Kim Yo-jong, had raised cautious hopes that North Korea might be ready to resume dialogue, two and a half years after Mr. Kim’s diplomacy with former President Donald J. Trump collapsed in early 2019 without an agreement on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs and lifting sanctions on the country.

But speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, the North’s ambassador, Kim Song, reiterated that Washington must end “hostile policy” toward his country if it wants peace on the peninsula. The Korean War was halted in a truce in 1953, leaving the peninsula technically in a state of war.

“If the U.S. wants to see the Korean War, the most prolonged and long-lasting war in the world, come to an end, and if it is really desirous of peace and reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, it should take the first step towards giving up its hostile policy,” Mr. Kim, the ambassador, said.

And the first step includes “stopping permanently the joint military exercises and the deployment of all kinds of strategic weapons” in and around the peninsula, he added.