Leaders agreed to call for an emergency meeting of the UN security council to discuss the launch 
 
 Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe have vowed to increase pressure on North Korea after the regime launched a missile over Japan on Tuesday morning. 
 
 The Japanese prime minister denounced the launch as an “unprecedented and grave threat” to the country’s security. In a 40-minute phone call with the US president they agreed to call for an emergency meeting of the UN security council to discuss the situation. 
 
 
 
 Living on the edge of oblivion: life along the North Korean border Read more 
 
 Officials in South Korea said the missile may have flown further than any other tested by North Korea. The test, one of the most provocative ever from the reclusive state, sent a clear message to Washington just weeks after Kim Jong-un threatened to target the US Pacific territory of Guam with similar intermediate-range missiles. 
 
 It also demonstrated the regime’s willingness to raise the diplomatic stakes by sending a missile directly over Japanese territory. Pyongyang has tested more powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) this year, but Tuesday’s launch followed a much flatter trajectory than those tests. 
 
 Trump said the US was “100% with Japan” and repeated his strong commitment to the defence of Japan, Abe said shortly after the call. 
 
 
 
 “The outrageous act of firing a missile over our country is an unprecedented, serious and grave threat and greatly damages regional peace and security,” Abe told reporters in Tokyo, adding that his government had protested to Pyongyang via the Japanese embassy in Beijing. 
 
 The missile was the third fired by North Korea to have passed over Japanese territory. The first was in 1998 and the second in 2009, although Pyongyang claims they were satellites. 
 
 Abe said Japan would “strongly call for increased pressure on North Korea in cooperation with the international community” via the security council. 
 
 
 
 The missile, thought to be a new intermediate-range Hwasong-12, flew over Hokkaido and landed in the Pacific about 733 miles (1,180km) east of the northern Japanese island, South Korean and Japanese officials said. 
 
 The Hwasong-12 is the same type of missile North Korea recently threatened to launch towards Guam. 
 
 China called for restraint and warned that the situation on the Korean peninsular had reached “a tipping point approaching a crisis”. 
 
 Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily press briefing in Beijing: “Think hard about it, who do you think should take the blame, if China is urging all parties to calm down while one party holds constant military exercises … and the other is constantly launching missiles?” 
 
 Japan’s J-Alert warning system advised people across a large area of northern Japan to seek shelter. Japan’s self-defence forces did not attempt to shoot down the missile and there were no reports of damage from falling debris. 
 
 
 
 The public broadcaster NHK said the missile had been launched from a site near the North Korean capital, Pyongyang and passed over a sparsely populated area of Hokkaido just after 6am local time (10pm Monday British summer time). It broke into three parts and landed in the sea. 
 
 Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff (JCS) said the missile travelled about 2,700km and reached a maximum height of 550km. 
 
 The JCS said it was analysing the launch with the US and that South Korea’s military had strengthened its monitoring and preparation in case of further actions from North Korea. 
 
 Abe said his government was trying to establish the details of the launch and was doing everything possible to ensure the safety of the Japanese people. 
 
 Tuesday’s launch may have been a show of defiance towards military drills involving US and South Korean troops as well as a smaller number of personnel from other countries. 
 
 The drills have coincided with a dramatic rise in tensions on the Korean peninsula after North Korea’s test launch of two ICBMs and its threat to target seas off the coast of the Guam. 
 
 Seoul and Washington say their drills are an opportunity for the allies to improve their defensive capabilities but Pyongyang routinely denounces them as a dress rehearsal for war against North Korea. 
 
 On Tuesday North Korea’s ambassador to the UN said the joint exercises were driving the Korean peninsula towards “an extreme level of explosion”. 
 
 “Now that the US has openly declared its hostile intention towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, by waging aggressive joint military exercises despite repeated warnings … my country has every reason to respond with tough counter-measures as an exercise of its right to self defence,” Han Tae Song told the UN conference on disarmament, which is taking place in Geneva. 
 
 At the UN conference, multiple envoys, including those from the US, European Union, Japan and Australia took the floor to blast North Korea. “My hope is that North Korea ends this provocative behaviour,” US ambassador Robert Wood said. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest US soldiers during the annual US South Korea Ulchi-Freedom Guardian military exercises in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea. Photograph: Ahn Young-joon/AP 
 
 
 
 
 
 The latest launch came three days after the North fired what were assessed as three short-range ballistic missiles into the sea and a month after its second test flight of an ICBM that analysts say could theoretically reach the US mainland. 
 
 Tuesday’s missile landed nowhere near Guam, which is about 2,500km south of Tokyo, but it covered enough distance to suggest that North Korea could follow up on its threat to the US territory. 
 
 South Korea said it was launched from Sunan, the location of Pyongyang’s international airport, raising the possibility that a runway was used as the launchpad. 
 
 Several towns in Japan have held evacuation drills this year in anticipation of a North Korean attack and there has been a steep rise in sales of individual nuclear shelters. 
 
 
 
 After North Korea threatened to fire a volley of missiles towards Guam earlier this month, Japan deployed Patriot missile defence systems in areas along the missiles’ anticipated route. Japan also has an Aegis destroyer stationed in the Sea of Japan. 
 
 North Korea first fired a missile over Japanese territory in 1998, triggering widespread condemnation and attempts by Japan’s government to improve its missile defence systems. 
 
 Japan has in the past vowed to shoot down North Korean missiles or rockets that threaten to hit its territory. In 2009 a North Korean rocket passed over Japanese territory without incident, leading to an immediate denunciation by Japan. 
 
 At the time North Korea said it was launching a telecommunications satellite but Washington, Seoul and Tokyo believed Pyongyang was testing an ICBM. 
 
 Wang Zhen in Beijing and agencies contributed to this report ||||| This article is over 1 year old 
 
 Kim Jong-un, who oversaw rocket launch on Sunday, warns Washington that US mainland is in ‘sighting range for strike’ 
 
 North Korea claims the US mainland is now within range of its missiles after it successfully test-fired a new rocket it says is capable of carrying a “large-scale, heavy nuclear warhead”. 
 
 North Korea test-fires what could be new kind of longer-range missile Read more 
 
 Sunday morning’s launch of a mid- to long-range ballistic missile was overseen by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, who accused the US of “browbeating” countries that “have no nukes”. He warned Washington not to misjudge the reality that the US mainland is in Pyongyang’s “sighting range for [a] strike”, the KCNA state news agency reported. 
 
 KCNA said the missile was a new ground-to-ground Hwasong-12 capable of carrying a large-size heavy nuclear warhead. Kim reportedly “hugged officials in the field of rocket research, saying that they worked hard to achieve a great thing”, it added. 
 
 The missile was launched on an unusually high trajectory to avoid threatening the security of nearby countries. KCNA said it flew to an altitude of 1,312 miles (2,111 km) and travelled 490 miles before landing in the Sea of Japan, near Russia. 
 
 Most experts are sceptical of North Korean claims that it has missiles that can reach the US mainland, but analysts said the flight data suggested the rocket launched on Sunday could fly at least 2,800 miles if launched at a standard trajectory – putting the Pacific territory of Guam within range. 
 
 “This is the longest-range missile North Korea has ever tested,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in the US, told Agence France-Presse. 
 
 John Schilling, an aerospace engineering specialist, said on the website of 38 North, a Washington-based monitoring project, that the launch appeared to demonstrate an intermediate-range ballistic missile that could reliably strike the US base at Guam in the Pacific. 
 
 “More importantly,” Schilling said, it “may represent a substantial advance to developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).” 
 
 Schilling said the ability to hit Guam was not a game-changer, but the new missile could be the forerunner to an even more powerful missile. 
 
 “What would change the strategic balance is an ICBM capable of reaching the US mainland,” he said. “This is not that missile but it might be a test bed, demonstrating technologies and systems to be used in future ICBMs.” 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest An unidentified missile that analysts believe could be the North Korean Hwasong-12 being paraded in Pyongyang last month. Photograph: Wong Maye-E/AP 
 
 The Trump administration has warned that a first ICBM test, together with any further nuclear tests, would cross a line that could prompt military retaliation, although the president has also called for the proper application of multilateral sanctions against Pyongyang and even held out the possibility of a summit with Kim “if the conditions are set”. 
 
 
 
 Sunday’s launch is also being interpreted as sending a message to South Korea, days after President Moon Jae-in took office, pledging to engage Pyongyang after declaring a decade of isolation and sanctions under his conservative predecessors a failure. 
 
 'We are a target': South Korean village wakes up on frontline with North Read more 
 
 On Monday, South Korea’s unification ministry declined to speculate on its neighbour’s intentions, but warned it not to underestimate the strength of international opposition to its missile tests. 
 
 “[The international community] has the shared view that North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations pose a grave threat to peace and security in the region and beyond the peninsula,” Lee Duk-haeng, a ministry spokesman, said. 
 
 The Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, called on China – North Korea’s main ally and trading partner – to increase pressure on the regime to end its missile tests. 
 
 He said the regime’s conduct was reckless, provocative and unlawful. 
 
 “The greatest responsibility for bringing North Korea to its senses … lies with China,” he said. “They have the overwhelming dominant economic relationship with North Korea and because they have the greatest leverage, they have the greatest responsibility.” 
 
 The US military’s Pacific command said the type of missile fired was “not consistent with an intercontinental ballistic missile”. 
 
 
 
 KCNA said the launch was designed to verify “the tactical and technological specifications of the newly developed ballistic rocket capable of carrying a large-size heavy nuclear warhead”. 
 
 The UN security council is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to discuss the missile launch, diplomats said. 
 
 The US ambassador to the UN called the launch a message by Pyongyang to South Korea after the election of Moon. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nikki Haley at a security council meeting at the UN headquarters in New York. Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Reuters 
 
 Nikki Haley told ABC’s This Week programme: “You first have to get into Kim Jong-un’s head – which is, he’s in a state of paranoia, he’s incredibly concerned about anything and everything around him.” 
 
 She said the missile test had quashed any immediate prospects of Trump holding talks with Kim : “Having a missile test is not the way to sit down with the president, because he’s absolutely not going to do it.” 
 
 
 
 Haley added that Kim “can sit there and say all the conditions he wants. Until he meets our conditions, we’re not sitting down with him.” 
 
 The KCNA report on the missile’s flight was largely consistent with South Korean and Japanese assessments that it flew 435 miles and reached an altitude of more than 1,243 miles, which is further and higher than an intermediate-range missile tested in February from the same region, north-west of Pyongyang. 
 
 Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report ||||| This article is over 1 year old 
 
 Japan’s government strongly protests to Pyongyang and condemns launch but says there were no reports of damage 
 
 North Korea has fired another missile off its east coast, South Korea’s military has said, as the regime seeks to build nuclear-tipped ICBMs that can reach the US mainland. 
 
 The missile landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the Sea of Japan. Yoshihide Suga, a spokesman for the Japanese government, said it had strongly protested to Pyongyang about the launch. There were no reports of damage, he added. 
 
 Play Video 3:27 Could North Korea trigger a nuclear war? – video 
 
 “This ballistic missile launch by North Korea is highly problematic from the perspective of the safety of shipping and air traffic, and is a clear violation of United Nations security council resolutions,” Suga told reporters. 
 
 “Japan absolutely cannot tolerate North Korea’s repeated provocative actions. We have strongly protested to North Korea and condemn its actions in the strongest terms.” 
 
 A statement from South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said the launch came from near the eastern port city of Wonsan. The military said it was a short-range Scud missile that flew about 450km (280 miles). 
 
 South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, without citing a source, said the projectile was believed to be a ballistic missile, but the South Korean military said it was still analysing it. 
 
 The US president, Donald Trump, was briefed about the missile test, a White House official said. 
 
 North Korea is thought to still be several years away from being able to target US mainland cities, but each test brings this goal closer. 
 
 Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs are among the biggest foreign policy challenges for Trump and the new South Korean president, Moon Jae-in. 
 
 Trump has alternated in his public statements between bellicosity and flattery, but his administration is working to solidify a policy to deal with North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. 
 
 Moon, who was elected earlier this month, has signalled that he will be flexible in expanding civilian exchange with North Korea. But many analysts say he is not likely to push for a major rapprochement because Pyongyang has gone too far on its nuclear programme. 
 
 Besides regular ballistic missile test launches, North Korea carried out two nuclear tests in January and September 2016. Analysts believe the North may be able to arm some of its shorter-range missiles with nuclear warheads, though the exact state of its weapons programme is unknown. 
 
 Moon has made tentative steps toward engaging with Pyongyang by restarting stalled civilian aid initiatives. 
 
 South Korea recently said it would allow a civic group to contact North Korea about potentially offering help with treating malaria, the first government approval on cross-border civilian exchanges since January 2016. 
 
 Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report ||||| If claim of ICBM launch is confirmed, it could move regime closer to being able to strike US mainland 
 
 North Korea claims to have conducted its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) , a development that, if confirmed, could move the regime closer to being able to strike the US mainland and dramatically strengthen its hand in negotiations with Washington. 
 
 South Korean and Japanese officials said they were studying the data to confirm whether or not it was an ICBM, but analysts said it appeared the missile had the range to strike Alaska but not other parts of the continental US. 
 
 Later there were reports in the US that officials believe North Korea may have fired its first intercontinental missile, though there was no official public statement from the US about this. 
 
 Why does the North Korean regime pursue a nuclear programme? Much of the regime’s domestic legitimacy rests on portraying the country as under constant threat from the US and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan. 
 
 To support the claim that it is in Washington’s crosshairs, North Korea cites the tens of thousands of US troops lined up along the southern side of the demilitarised zone – the heavily fortified border dividing the Korean peninsula. Faced with what it says are US provocations, North Korea says it has as much right as any other state to develop a nuclear deterrent. North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un is also aware of the fate of other dictators who lack nuclear weapons. 
 
 
 
 
 
 The launch, which came as Americans prepared to mark Independence Day, triggered a Twitter outburst from President Donald Trump who urged China to act to “end this nonsense once and for all”. 
 
 In a joint statement released after the missile test, Russia and China condemned the launch and proposed that North Korea declare a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, while at the same time calling on Washington to immediately halt deployment of its THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea. 
 
 In a rare announcement on state North Korean television, an emotional newsreader said Kim Jong-un had personally overseen the “landmark” test of a Hwasong-14 missile. 
 
 North Korea was now a “a strong nuclear power state” and had “a very powerful ICBM that can strike any place in the world,” the newsreader said. 
 
 She added that the missile had reached an altitude of 2,802km (1,741 miles) and flew 933km (580 miles) – longer and higher than any of the regime’s previous similar tests. Those figures roughly concurred with analysis by Japanese and South Korean officials. 
 
 Early indications were that the missile was a single-stage device. 
 
 
 
 But later, NBC News cited two unnamed US officials saying they now believed it was “two stage”, and CNN quoted one official saying it was a “probable” ICBM and that the ongoing assessment suggested a second-stage booster did ignite and produced additional flight for 30 seconds. 
 
 
 
 While the apparent advancement in North Korea’s missile technology will add to concerns that the regime is moving closer to developing the capacity to strike the US mainland, many analysts still doubt whether it can miniaturise a nuclear weapon sufficiently to fit it on to a missile. They also believe the regime is unlikely to have mastered the technology needed for an ICBM to survive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. 
 
 South Korea’s military confirmed that North Korea had fired an “unidentified ballistic missile” into the Sea of Japan – known in North Korea as the East Sea of Korea – from Banghyon in North Pyongan, a province near its border with China. 
 
 The timing of North Korea’s 11th launch this year – on the eve of the US Independence Day holiday and just before the start of the G20 summit in Hamburg – was significant. It came soon after Donald Trump met the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, in Washington, and held telephone discussions dominated by Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe. 
 
 The missile landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, the South Korean military and Japanese government said. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A screengrab from footage on North Korean TV purporting to show preparations for Tuesday’s missile test. Photograph: Korean state television 
 
 Tokyo strongly protested against what it called a clear violation of UN resolutions banning Pyongyang from developing ballistic missile technology. 
 
 North Korea's missile test: everything you need to know Read more 
 
 The US Pacific Command said it detected and tracked the “single launch of a land-based, intermediate-range ballistic missile” for 37 minutes near an airfield in Panghyon, about 60 miles north-west of Pyongyang - a flight time longer than any similar previous tests. 
 
 The joint statement from Russia and China, issued shortly after President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping held wide-ranging talks in the Kremlin, called on North Korea, South Korea and the United States to sign up to a Chinese de-escalation plan designed to defuse tensions around Pyongyang’s missile programme. 
 
 The plan would see North Korea suspend its ballistic missile programme and the United States and South Korea simultaneously call a moratorium on large-scale missile exercises, both moves aimed at paving the way for multilateral talks. 
 
 “The situation in the region affects the national interests of both countries,” the joint statement said. “Russia and China will work in close coordination to advance a solution to the complex problem of the Korean Peninsula in every possible way.” 
 
 The joint declaration also called on Washington to immediately halt deployment of its THAAD anti-missile system in South Korea, a move Washington says is necessitated by the North Korean missile threat. The statement said Washington was using North Korea as a pretext to expand its military infrastructure in Asia and risked upsetting the strategic balance of power in the area. 
 
 On Monday China’s ambassador to the United Nations had warned of “disastrous” consequences if world powers fail to find a way to ease tensions with North Korea that risked getting “out of control”. 
 
 North Korea has increased the frequency of tests this year as it attempts to develop a missile capable of carrying a miniaturised nuclear warhead as far as the US mainland – a geopolitical game-changer that Trump has vowed “won’t happen”. 
 
 The regime’s most recent missile test before Tuesday came on 8 June when it launched a new type of cruise missile that Pyongyang said was capable of striking US and South Korean warships “at will”. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kim Jong-un studies the launch site for Tuesday’s missile test. Photograph: Korean state television 
 
 David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a blogpost the initial assessments of the flight time and distance suggested the missile fired on Tuesday could have a maximum range of roughly 6,700km (4,160 miles). “That range would not be enough to reach the lower 48 states or the large islands of Hawaii, but would allow it to reach all of Alaska,” he said. 
 
 Shea Cotton, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in the US, suggested the launch was deliberately timed to coincide with the anniversary of the US declaration of independence. “It’s already 4th of July in North Korea,” he said on Twitter. “I somewhat suspect they’re shooting off some fireworks today specifically because of that.” 
 
 South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff immediately briefed Moon. Since taking office on 10 May, Moon has tried to push cautious engagement with Pyongyang, but the regime has continued its missile tests, insisting it has the right to develop a nuclear deterrent to counter what it calls growing military provocations by the US. 
 
 Trump and Moon agreed to apply “maximum pressure” to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, but agreed they were open to dialogue with the regime “under the right circumstances”. 
 
 Trump declared the US had run out of patience with North Korea over its weapons programme. “Together, we are facing the threat of the reckless and brutal regime in North Korea,” he said. “The nuclear and ballistic missile programs of that regime require a determined response.”
– The stakes just got even higher on the Korean Peninsula: North Korea says the missile it test-launched early Tuesday was an intercontinental ballistic missile, not the intermediate-range missile that US and South Korean authorities initially said they detected. North Korea's military described the launch of the Hwasong-14 as the "final step" in creating a "confident and powerful nuclear state that can strike anywhere on Earth," though other nations have yet to confirm that the missile really was an ICBM. The latest: Authorities in Japan and South Korea did not comment on whether they now believe the launch, thought to have been Pyongyang's most successful yet, was an ICBM, the AP reports. Confirmation may require retrieving parts of the missile, which landed in the Sea of Japan. If the missile is confirmed to have been an ICBM, Pyongyang could now be capable of striking the US and will have a much stronger hand in dealing with Washington, reports the Guardian. According to US Pacific Command, the missile flew for 37 minutes on a very high trajectory, landing in waters Japan considers to be part of its exclusive economic zone. In a look at the technical issues involved, CNN reports that Pyongyang aimed the missile high to test it without causing a major international incident. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he will ask the leaders of China and Russia to do more to help stop Pyongyang's missile program, Reuters reports. "Leaders of the world will gather at the G20 meeting. I would like to strongly call for solidarity of the international community on the North Korean issue," he said. David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists says the missile could have reached 4,160 miles on a standard trajectory, which "would not be enough to reach the lower 48 states or the large islands of Hawaii, but would allow it to reach all of Alaska." But experts believe that Pyongyang still lacks the technology to target a place accurately or miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit on an ICBM, the BBC reports. Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, tells the New York Times that the missile appears to be the longest-range one North Korea has ever tested. "It's a very big deal—it looks like North Korea tested an ICBM," he says. "Even if this is a 7,000-km-range missile, a 10,000-km-range missile that can hit New York isn't far off." (After the launch, President Trump called for a "heavy move" from China.)