N Korea fires missile after threatening retaliation

North Korea has fired an intercontinental ballistic rocket (ICBM), Japan's authorities has said.

The defence ministry confirmed it was launched connected Saturday, flew for 66 minutes and landed successful the Sea of Japan.

It comes aft Pyongyang showed disconnected its monolithic subject mightiness successful a parade that included much than a twelve ICBMs.

On Friday, North Korea threatened to unleash an "unprecedentedly strong" retaliation to immoderate subject drills betwixt South Korea and the US.

The yearly springtime exercises, which are owed to commencement adjacent month, are designed to assistance fend disconnected North Korea's expanding atomic threats. But Pyongyang has agelong insisted they are successful mentation to invade North Korea.

Saturday's missile, which is the archetypal to beryllium launched since caller year's day, splashed down westbound of Hokkaido, successful Japan's exclusive economical portion astatine 18:27 (09:27 GMT), Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.

It flew an estimated 900km (560 miles) and reached an altitude of 5,700km, authorities spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno said successful Tokyo. While that is incredibly precocious - the borderline of abstraction is astir 100km - it is not the highest a North Korean rocket has flown.

In November, an ICBM reached an altitude of 6,100km. Previously, successful January 2022, North Korea released bonzer photos of the Earth that it claimed were taken from a rocket motorboat that reached 2,000km.

ICBMs are peculiarly worrying due to the fact that of their agelong range, including mainland United States.

Japan's Defence Minister Hamada Yasukazu said Saturday's rocket would person been capable to bash this, with a imaginable scope of 14,000km.

"This bid of actions by North Korea threatens the bid and stableness of Japan and the planetary community, and is perfectly unforgivable," Mr Matsuno said.

South Korea's subject reported the rocket was launched from the Sunan district, northbound of Pyongyang, wherever the planetary airdrome is located. It is besides wherever North Korea has launched astir of its caller ICBM tests.

North Korea's ballistic rocket and atomic weapons programmes are banned by the UN Security Council. But this has not stopped Pyongyang from continuing with its weapons development, and holding elaborate subject parades to amusement them off.