North Korea's latest missile launch appears to be "an intentional provocation" to express its displeasure with the ongoing Seoul-Washington military drills, Seoul's defense ministry said Friday. On Thursday, the communist country fired four short-range missiles from its southeast coast into the East Sea, throwing cold water on a recent thaw in inter-Korean relations. "Given its timing, we believe that the North's missile launch was very intentional and a kind of provocation," Seoul's defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said in a regular briefing.