A vehicle carrying a PAC-3 missile interceptor arrives at a port on Ishigaki Island, Okinawa prefecture, southwestern Japan Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016. North Korea has moved up the window of its planned long-range... (Associated Press) 
 
 A vehicle carrying a PAC-3 missile interceptor arrives at a port on Ishigaki Island, Okinawa prefecture, southwestern Japan Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016. North Korea has moved up the window of its planned long-range... (Associated Press) 
 
 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Sunday defied international warnings and launched a long-range rocket that the United Nations and others call a cover for a banned test of technology for a missile that could strike the U.S. mainland. 
 
 The rocket was fired from North Korea's west coast and tracked separately by the governments Japan and South Korea, which immediately convened a an emergency national security council meeting. South Korean media reported that the rocket may have failed, but provided no other details. The South Korean government couldn't immediately confirm the reports. 
 
 The launch came about two hours after an eight-day launch window opened Sunday morning. It follows North Korea's widely disputed claim last month to have tested a hydrogen bomb. Washington, Seoul and their allies will consider it a further provocation and will push for more tough sanctions in the United Nations. 
 
 A South Korean defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of office rules, said the rocket disappeared from South Korean military radars around six minutes after its launch. The official said there were no immediate reports of debris landing on South Korean territory or damaging property. The rocket's first stage fell off South Korea's west coast, the official said. 
 
 Japan's NHK broadcaster showed footage of an object visible in the skies from the southern island of Okinawa that was believed to be the rocket. Japanese chief Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters that no debris fell on Japanese territory. 
 
 North Korean rocket and nuclear tests are seen as crucial steps toward the North's ultimate goal of a nuclear armed long-range missile arsenal. North Korea under leader Kim Jong Un has pledged to bolster its nuclear arsenal unless Washington scraps what Pyongyang calls a hostile policy meant to collapse Kim's government. 
 
 The global condemnation began almost immediately. 
 
 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the North Korean rocket launch and the recent nuclear test violations of U.N. agreements. 
 
 "We absolutely cannot allow this," he told reporters at the prime minister's residence. "We will take action to totally protect the safety and well-being of our people." 
 
 U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said in a statement that "North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programs represent serious threats to our interests — including the security of some of our closest allies — and undermine peace and security in the broader region." 
 
 The United States and Japan requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Sunday morning. Their request said that North Korea has violated a Security Council ban on ballistic missile launches. 
 
 Kim Jong Un has overseen two of the North's four nuclear tests and three long-range rocket tests since taking over after the death of his father, dictator Kim Jong Il, in late 2011. North Korea says its rocket launches are satellite missions, but the U.S., South Korea and others say they are a covert test of ballistic missile technology. The U.N. Security Council prohibits North Korea from nuclear and ballistic missile activity. Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. 
 
 The Jan. 6 nuclear test has led to another push in the U.N. to tighten sanctions. North Korea in 2013 also did a nuclear test and then unnerved the international community by orchestrating an escalating campaign of bombast, including threats to fire nuclear missiles at the U.S. and Seoul. 
 
 The Korean border is the world's most heavily armed and the rivals' navies occasionally trade gunfire near a disputed boundary in the Yellow Sea. 
 
 North Korea has spent decades trying to develop operational nuclear weapons. 
 
 It is thought to have a small arsenal of atomic bombs and an impressive array of short- and medium-range missiles. But it has yet to demonstrate that it can produce nuclear bombs small enough to place on a missile, or missiles that can reliably deliver their bombs to faraway targets. 
 
 Still, the North's nuclear tests and steadily improving long-range rocket launches push its nuclear aims further along. 
 
 North Korea has said that plutonium and highly enriched uranium facilities at its main Nyongbyon nuclear complex are in operation. The country is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs but there is debate about whether it is capable of building warheads small enough to mount on a missile that could threaten the United States. 
 
 North Korea has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range rocket. After several failures, it put its first satellite into space with a long-range rocket launched in December 2012. 
 
 Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid fell apart in early 2009. 
 
 Under Kim Jong Un, a February 2012 deal for the United States to provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid in exchange for a freeze in nuclear and missile activities collapsed after a rocket launch by the North that April. 
 
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 Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul; Yuri Kageyama and Eric Talmadge in Tokyo contributed to this report. ||||| SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired five short-range projectiles into the sea on Monday, Seoul officials said, in a continuation of weapon launches it has carried out in an apparent response to ongoing South Korea-U.S. military drills it sees as a provocation. 
 
 The projectiles launched from a site near the northeastern city of Hamhung flew about 200 kilometers (125 miles) before landing in waters off North Korea's east coast, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said. 
 
 The South Korean military was attempting to determine whether the projectiles were missiles, artillery or rockets. 
 
 The firings came three days after Seoul said North Korea launched its first medium-range ballistic missile into the sea since early 2014, ignoring U.N. resolutions against such tests. 
 
 The firings appear to be North Korea's response to annual springtime U.S.-South Korean military exercises that it says are a rehearsal for an invasion. In the past two weeks North Korea has fired several short-range missiles and artillery shells into the sea and threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul. 
 
 This year's drills are the largest ever, and come after North Korea conducted a nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch earlier this year, leading the U.N. Security Council to impose its toughest sanctions on the country in two decades. 
 
 The U.S. special representative for North Korean policy, Sung Kim, who is visiting Seoul, said Monday that North Korea "should refrain from all provocative actions, including missile tests, which are clearly in violation of Security Council resolutions." 
 
 On Sunday, North Korean state TV broadcast photos showing leader Kim Jong Un supervising landing and defensive drills. The photos showed artillery blazing, navy ships landing as shells fell nearby, and soldiers running with the national flag. North Korea has a history of photo manipulation and there was no way to verify the authenticity of the photos. 
 
 Last week, state media said Kim ordered tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying such warheads. He issued the orders while overseeing what state media called a successful simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead to the atmosphere from space so it could hit its intended target. The re-entry vehicle is considered one of the last major technologies North Korea must master to develop long-range missiles equipped with nuclear weapons capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. 
 
 Analysts in South Korea said the medium-range missile launch last Friday may have been a test of the re-entry technology. North Korean state media have not commented on the reported launch. 
 
 South Korean defense officials say North Korea doesn't yet have functioning intercontinental ballistic missiles. 
 
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 Associated Press video journalist Chang Yong-jun contributed to this report.
– North Korea ignored UN resolutions by firing a medium-range ballistic missile into the sea on Friday, Seoul and Washington officials say, days after leader Kim Jong Un ordered weapons tests linked to its pursuit of a long-range nuclear missile capable of reaching the US mainland, the AP reports. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missile fired from a site north of Pyongyang flew about 500 miles before crashing off the North's east coast. It was the first medium-range missile launched by the North since it fired two in April 2014, says a South Korean defense official. Earlier this week, North Korea's state media said Kim had ordered tests soon of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying warheads. A military expert at the South's Konyang University says it's likely that Friday's launch was a test of a re-entry vehicle mounted on Pyongyang's purported Rodong missile. The North Korean missile fired may not be a Rodong but a long-range missile whose launch angle was altered so that it didn't fly its full range, says a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He says the missile may have carried an empty warhead, which contains trigger devices but lacks plutonium or uranium, to see if it can survive the fiery re-entry and detonate at the right time. Japan denounced the launch and lodged a formal diplomatic protest, warning that it will take "all necessary measures" to defend itself, reports Reuters. (Pyongyang claims it could wipe out Manhattan.)