NK Missile Tests Routine But Not Constructive:US

The U.S. State Department called North Korea's latest missile tests Thursday a routine part of the country's military exercise that make no "qualitative or quantitative difference," Yonhap News Agency reported.

Tom Casey, department spokesman, said the U.S. stance remains that Pyongyang should not engage in activities elevating confrontation or complication.

"I don't think our reaction to this is any different from what it has been to previous tests of this kind," he told reporters.

"I don't think there is any qualitative and quantitative difference between these and some of the things they've done previously."

The department's reaction is more subdued that that of the White House, which urged Pyongyang to refrain.

"North Korea should focus on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and fulfill its obligations under the Feb. 13 agreement," Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters in Germany where he was accompanying the U.S. president to the G-8 summit.

"This kind of activity is not constructive," he said.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said in Seoul that North Korea Thursday test-fired what appears to be two short-range missiles off its western coast _ one in the morning and another in the afternoon. The launch is believed to be part of Pyongyang's routine military exercise, and the missiles were of similar type of those tested on May 25, it said.