At least two Japanese high schools have canceled trips to the U.S. territory of Guam due to North Korea's recent threat to fire missiles into waters near the Pacific island.

The two schools are Oita Hofu High School in Oita Prefecture and Shimodate Daiichi High School in Ibaraki Prefecture.

They were among 12 schools across Japan with trips planned to Guam between September and November. The ministry did not identify the other 10 schools, saying only they were either high schools or vocational schools located in Tokyo, Hokkaido and seven other prefectures.


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Oita Hofu High School officials said the decision to cancel was made Monday to "secure the safety of students and eliminate their parents' concerns."

The school run by the Oita prefectural government had planned to send 280 second-year students to Guam in late October for cultural exchanges with university students there.

Shimodate Daiichi High School also planned to send second-year students to Guam in October on a four-day trip. But it decided to change the destination to somewhere in Japan after parents voiced concerns in a school questionnaire, the Ibaraki prefectural education board said.

While the Foreign Ministry has not issued any warning against traveling to the island, the school said it had made the decision after taking the tense geopolitical situation involving Guam into account.

An education ministry official said no general edicts on school trips abroad have been issued, and that the matter is left up to each school.

As part of a war of words with U.S. President Donald Trump, North Korea said earlier this month that it is contemplating launching ballistic missiles into waters near Guam.

With the announcement raising fears that tourists may be wary of traveling to Guam, the territory's lieutenant governor held a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday to implore Japanese to continue to visit.

"All the defenses are already in place" including the Aegis missile defense system, Raymond Tenorio said.

In another sign of concerns among the Japanese public about North Korean missiles, about 860 people took part in an evacuation drill Thursday in the southwestern Japanese city of Kamiamakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, under the premise that a ballistic missile had been launched toward Japan.

The drill was part of a series of similar activities held across the nation since March in the wake of repeated missile launches by North Korea. The Cabinet Secretariat, which organized the latest drill, said 860 participants is the largest number involved in a single drill so far.