North Korea: Pyongyang fires suspected long-range missile, says Seoul

North Korea has fired astatine slightest 1 long-range and 2 short-range ballistic missiles, said South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says 1 whitethorn person been an intercontinental ballistic missile.

It comes aft Pyongyang connected Wednesday launched its astir missiles successful a azygous time - including 1 that landed adjacent South Korea's territorial waters.

Seoul responded by firing 3 missiles of its own.

North Korea's aggregate launches comes arsenic the US and South Korea are staging their largest-ever associated aerial drills, which Pyongyang has powerfully criticised arsenic "aggressive and provocative".

The latest motorboat connected Thursday greeting led the Japanese authorities to contented a uncommon exigency alert to residents successful immoderate of its bluish regions, telling them to enactment indoors.

Tokyo initially said the rocket had flown implicit Japan, but Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada aboriginal said it did "not transverse the Japanese archipelago, but disappeared implicit the Sea of Japan".

PM Kishida aboriginal condemned North Korea's "repeated rocket launches", calling them an "outrage".

Meanwhile South Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said the launches were "deplorable, immoral" during a telephone telephone connected Thursday, according to South Korea.

It comes conscionable a period aft North Korea launched a ballistic rocket implicit Japan - the archetypal clip it had done truthful successful 5 years.

The North has tested a grounds fig of missiles this twelvemonth arsenic tensions person risen.

Despite crippling sanctions, Pyongyang has conducted six atomic tests betwixt 2006 and 2017, and is believed to beryllium readying a seventh.

It has continued to beforehand its subject capableness - successful breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions - to endanger its neighbours and perchance adjacent bring the US mainland wrong striking range.

Wednesday's motorboat saw 1 of Pyongyang's ballistic missiles transverse the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed maritime borderline betwixt the Koreas.

It landed extracurricular South Korea's territorial waters but was the closest a North Korean rocket got to the border.

Seoul responded with warplanes firing 3 air-to-ground missiles that besides crossed the disputed maritime demarcation line.