North Korea: Will Trump-Kim talks happen anytime soon?

North Korea responded on Thursday to claims by US President Donald Trump that he will be holding talks with leader Kim Jong Un later in the year with a broadside of ballistic missiles .

The South Korean military said Pyongyang launched 10 short-range missiles that landed in the sea off North Korea's east coast.

This came a day after Kim's powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, said Pyongyang was "completely unaware of" plans for discussions.

Trump's announcement on Wednesday that he is in contact with Kim and that the two leaders would meet later in the year appears to have caught Pyongyang off guard. It comes after the US president said the military would scale back annual military drills with South Korea.

The statement by Kim Yo Jong, director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and one of her brother's closest advisers, dismissed Trump's decision to dramatically scale back the 10-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises as "unworthy of comment and [we] have no interest in it at all."

"After Trump's overtures, Kim Yo Jong effectively said downscaling exercises is not enough, and North Korea launched about a dozen missiles in its third firing in two weeks," Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, told DW.

In a statement carried by the state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Yo Jong mocked South Korea as a "puppet" and indicated that only canceling the drills in their entirety would be seen as a "goodwill measure."

Choo Jae-woo, a professor of foreign policy at South Korea's Kyung Hee University, told DW that unlike in Trump's first term, Pyongyang right now is in a position of power and will likely seek more guarantees before coming to the negotiating table.