Hours after Vice President Kamala Harris left a diplomatic visit to South Korea, North Korea launched a pair of short-range ballistic missiles into the sea. South Korean officials believe the missiles were fired nine minutes apart from just outside of Pyongyang, landing in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. It was the third launch this week, marking an act of geopolitical defiance as Kim Jong Un presses Washington to view the country as a nuclear power. The last test occurred on Wednesday when Harris was in Japan to attend the state funeral of Shinzo Abe, and another on Sunday just before she was due to fly abroad. Before leaving South Korea, Harris stopped at the Demilitarized Zone, the region bordering the north, calling for the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. “In the South, we see a thriving democracy,” Harris said Thursday. “In the North, we see a brutal dictatorship.”