North Korea has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, which flew for 86 minutes – the longest flight recorded yet – and over 1,000km, before falling into waters off its east coast, South Korea and Japan said.
The ICBM was fired at a sharply-raised angle and reached as high as 7,000km (4,350 miles). This means that it if were launched horizontally, it would have covered a further distance.
The launch on Thursday comes at a time of deteriorating relations between the two Koreas and Pyongyang’s increasingly aggresive rhetoric towards Seoul.
South Korea had also warned on Wednesday that the North was preparing to fire its ICBM close to the US presidential election on 5 November.
Seoul’s defence ministry said the test was intended to develop weapons that “fire farther and higher”.
South Korea said it would impose fresh sanctions on the North in response to the launch.
The US called Thursday’s launch a “flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions”.
“It only demonstrates that [North Korea] continues to prioritise its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes over the well-being of its people,” the White House’s National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement.
