North Korea just fired a projectile and rejected Seoul's apology demand

So why now?

A day ago, Kim Yo Jong refused to apologise.

She's Kim Jong Un's sister. And she's powerful.

Seoul wanted an apology for land mines. Mines that wounded South Korean soldiers in the DMZ last month.

How many soldiers? Here's the problem. AP and AFP say three. Reuters says two. That's not sorted out yet.

But everyone agrees on who planted them. South Korea's military and the US-led UN Command both say the mines were North Korea's. Planted on the South Korean side of the border. The UN Command says it found one there itself, still active.

So Seoul asked for an apology. Kim Yo Jong said no.

She went further. She dismissed the apology demand as a farce, South Korean officials said, and called Seoul despicable.

And here's the timing. That came right after South Korea's President, Lee Jae Myung, said he hoped the North would come back to dialogue and rebuilding trust.

So the South offered dialogue. The North rejected it. Now there's a projectile in the water.

This isn't a one-off. North Korea has spent recent weeks testing a hypersonic missile system, running live-fire drills, and commissioning a new warship. This launch fits that pattern.

And North Korea has dropped unification as a goal entirely. It now calls South Korea its "primary foe".

Why would it do that? One Korean Studies professor, Vladimir Tikhonov at the University of Oslo, has an answer. He told AFP that North Korea earns money selling weapons to Russia, and uses that money to balance China. So it has little reason to get friendly with Japan, South Korea or America.

Here's something people forget. Seoul and Pyongyang are still technically at war. The Korean War ended in 1953 with a truce. Never a peace treaty.

So what don't we know? What was actually fired. How far it went. Whether North Korea will ever say anything about it.

Right now, South Korea's military is the only one confirming any of this happened at all.