A man watches a TV news program showing image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, published in the North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper, at Seoul Railway station in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, May 22,... (Associated Press) 
 
 TOKYO (AP) — North Korea says it's ready to deploy and start mass-producing a new medium-range missile capable of reaching Japan and major U.S. military bases there following a test launch it claims confirmed the missile's combat readiness and is an "answer" to President Donald Trump's policies. 
 
 The solid-fuel Pukguksong-2 missile flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles) and reached a height of 560 kilometers (350 miles) Sunday before plunging into the Pacific Ocean. North Korea's media said more missiles will be launched in the future. 
 
 Trump, traveling in Saudi Arabia, had no immediate public comment. 
 
 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the launch and watched from an observation post, state media reported Monday. The Korea Central News Agency said the test verified technical aspects of the weapon system and examined its "adaptability under various battle conditions" before it is deployed to military units. 
 
 Kim reportedly said the launch was a success, "approved the deployment of this weapon system for action" and said that it should "be rapidly mass-produced." 
 
 North Korea has significantly speeded up its missile tests over the past year or so and appears to be making tangible progress toward developing an arsenal that poses a threat not only to South Korea and Japan — which together host about 80,000 U.S. troops — but also toward an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the mainland United States. 
 
 It's moving ahead with its nuclear weapons program as well. 
 
 The North conducted two nuclear tests last year. It claims one was a hydrogen bomb and the other device created a more powerful explosion than any the North has previous tested. Satellite imagery suggests it could be ready to conduct its next test — which would be its sixth — at virtually any time. 
 
 Pyongyang's often-stated goal is to perfect a nuclear warhead that it can put on a missile capable of hitting Washington or other U.S. cities. 
 
 North Korea's media, meanwhile, have stepped up their calls for even more missile launches because of what Pyongyang claims is an increasingly hostile policy by President Donald Trump. 
 
 "The Trump administration would be well advised to lend an ear to the voices of concern that are heard from the U.S. and the international community," the North's Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary Sunday. "Many more 'Juche weapons' capable of striking the U.S. will be launched from this land. This is the DPRK's answer to the Trump administration.'" 
 
 "Juche," in this usage, refers to domestically produced and DPRK is short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 
 
 In an interview with "Fox News Sunday" U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the ongoing testing is "disappointing" and "disturbing." 
 
 South Korea held a National Security Council meeting after the launch, and its Foreign Ministry said the launch "throws cold water" on efforts to ease tensions on the peninsula. 
 
 At the request of diplomats from the U.S., Japan and South Korea, a United Nations' Security Council consultation on the missile test will take place Tuesday. 
 
 North Korea a week earlier had successfully tested a new midrange missile — the Hwasong 12 — that it said could carry a heavy nuclear warhead. 
 
 Experts said that rocket flew higher and for a longer time than any other missile previously tested by North Korea and represents another big advance toward a viable ICBM. 
 
 David Wright, an expert on North Korea's missiles and nuclear program who is with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the latest missile could have flown farther but was fired on a "lofted" trajectory, which sends the missile high up so that it will land in the open seas rather than flying over or splashing down near neighboring countries. 
 
 He noted the Pukguksong-2's solid fuel is of particular concern. 
 
 Solid-fuel missiles have their fuel loaded in them before being moved into place, allowing them to be launched faster and with more secrecy. Liquid-fuel missiles, on the other hand, are fueled at the launch site in a process that can last an hour and requires fueling and other vehicles. That makes then easier to spot and easier to destroy than the solid-fuel variety. 
 
 ___ 
 
 AP writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Edith M. Lederer in New York contributed to this report. Talmadge is the AP's Pyongyang bureau chief. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/EricTalmadge and Instagram at erictalmadge. ||||| 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 ||||| Pyongyang says it will launch four missiles into waters ‘30-40km’ off US territory in Pacific Ocean 
 
 North Korea has defied threats of “fire and fury” from Donald Trump, deriding his warning as a “load of nonsense” and announcing a detailed plan to launch missiles aimed at the waters off the coast of the US Pacific territory of Guam. 
 
 'Will even white people die?' How to explain nuclear war to your kids | First Dog on the Moon Read more 
 
 A statement attributed to General Kim Rak Gyom, the head of the country’s strategic forces, declared: “Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him”. The general outlined a plan to carry out a demonstration launch of four intermediate-range missiles that would fly over Japan and then land in the sea around Guam, “enveloping” the island. 
 
 “The Hwasong-12 rockets to be launched by the KPA [Korean People’s Army] will cross the sky above Shimani, Hiroshima and Koichi prefectures of Japan,” the statement said. “They will fly for 3,356.7 km for 1,065 seconds and hit the waters 30 to 40km away from Guam.” 
 
 The statement said the plan for this show of force would be ready by the middle of this month and then await orders from the commander-in-chief, Kim Jong-un. 
 
 The statement was clearly designed as a show of bravado, calling the Trump administration’s bluff after the president’s threat and a statement from the defence secretary, James Mattis, both stressing the overwhelming power of the US military. “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met by fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump said on Wednesday. 
 
 The response from Pyongyang was its most public and detailed threat to date, and evidently meant to goad the US president. Trump had “let out a load of nonsense about ‘fire and fury’ failing to grasp the ongoing grave situation. This is extremely getting on the nerves of the infuriated Hwasong artillerymen of the KPA.” 
 
 The US has a naval base in Guam and the island is home to Andersen air base, which has six B-1B heavy bombers. According to NBC news the non-nuclear bombers have made 11 practice sorties since May in readiness for a potential strike on North Korea. The remote island is home to 162,000 people. 
 
 Q&A Why is North Korea threatening Guam? Show Hide Guam, a 210 sq mile sovereign US territory in the western Pacific Ocean, is used by America as a strategic military base. Almost a third of its land is controlled by the US military and about 6,000 American troops are based there. 
 
 The island's location, within range of North Korean medium- and long-range missiles, and military significance to the US make it a logical target for Pyongyang. 
 
 As recently as Monday, two US air force B-1B bombers flew from Guam to join their counterparts from South Korea and Japan for a mission over the Korean peninsula, about 2,100 miles away. Read more 
 
 
 
 South Korea’s military said on Thursday that North Korea’s statements were a challenge against Seoul and the US-South Korea alliance. Joint chiefs of staff spokesman Roh Jae-cheon told a media briefing that South Korea was prepared to act immediately against any North Korean provocation. 
 
 Japan’s chief government spokesman said the country could “never tolerate this”. “North Korea’s actions are obviously provocative to the region as well as to the security of the international community,” Yoshihide Suga said. 
 
 Play Video 0:43 North Koreans stage mass rally to denounce UN sanctions – video 
 
 The announcement on the North Korean state news service KCNA came at the end of two days of brinksmanship which began with the leak of a US intelligence report that Pyongyang had developed a nuclear warhead small enough to put on a missile. This was followed by Trump’s warning of “fire and fury”. On Wednesday the US defence secretary, James Mattis, said a North Korean attack would risk the “end of its regime and the destruction of its people”. 
 
 On Thursday, Trump’s deputy assistant, Sebastian Gorka, declined to tone down the rhetoric, warning Pyongyang: “Do not challenge the United States because you will pay a cost if you do so” 
 
 Asked if the threat of a strike, rather than an actual attack, would be enough to provoke a response, Gorka told the BBC: “If you threaten a nation, then what should you expect; a stiffly worded letter to be sent by courier? Is that what the UK would do if a nation threatened a nuclear-tipped missile launched against any of the UK’s territories?” 
 
 Damian Green, the UK’s first secretary of state, urged the Trump administration to use UN processes to resolve the crisis. “It’s obviously in all our interests to make sure that nothing escalates,” Green said on a visit to Edinburgh. “We are very strongly in support of the UN process, which has and continues to put pressure on North Korea to stop acting in an irresponsible way.” 
 
 In the event of a missile launch by North Korea, the US military faces the dilemma of trying to intercept the incoming missiles and risking humiliation if it fails. Trump would have to decide whether to try to carry out a pre-emptive strike on the Hwasong launchpads or a retaliation strike if the launch went ahead. The North Korean military has frequently tested missiles that land in the sea off the Japanese coast, without a military response from Tokyo. 
 
 
 
 “For the [North Koreans] to telegraph a move like this is extraordinary. But it’s probably their way of trying not to trigger a war,” said Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He said that if the launch went ahead as laid out in the statement, it gave US the opportunity to concentrate its ballistic defences in that area, to give them a better chance to shoot down the incoming missiles. 
 
 “The reason you can’t shoot down a test is that it doesn’t enter a defended area. But that wouldn’t be the case with ‘bracketing fire’,” Pollack said in a thread of tweets. He argued that the exchange of threats and the missile plans underlined the need to open a military hotline between the US and North Korea to mitigate the dangers of catastrophic miscalculation by either side. 
 
 
 
 “If they do carry out that plan, both sides might discover that they need a crisis management mechanism sooner than not,” Pollack said. 
 
 Q&A What are North Korea's nuclear capabilities? Show Hide North Korea has carried out five nuclear tests since 2006, so it unquestionably has the capacity to create some form of nuclear bomb. 
 
 To function effectively, however, the bomb needs to be small enough to fit on to a missile. Some experts believe the North has already "miniaturised" its nuclear capability, while others believe the regime is still several years away from being able to do so. Japan's defence ministry warned on 8 August that it was possible that Pyongyang had mastered miniaturisation. 
 
 North Korea would also need a reliable delivery system for any bomb. Its proven short- and medium-range missiles could reach South Korea and Japan. In July it test-launched two intercontinental ballistic missiles, placing US cities in range of potential attack, according to US experts. 
 
 Mattis’s reminder to Pyongyang that the allied militaries “possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth” capped an unprecedented 24 hours of sabre-rattling sparked by Donald Trump’s surprise threat to rain “fire and fury” down on the Pyongyang regime. 
 
 Despite the harsh rhetoric, there was no change in US military deployments or alert status. Mattis couched his remarks in the language of traditional deterrence, making clear that such overwhelming force would be used in the event of a North Korean attack. 
 
 God save us from Donald Trump's fire and fury | Richard Wolffe Read more 
 
 Trump – without consulting his own security staff – had warned of a devastating onslaught “like the world has never seen” if Kim’s government persisted in threats against the US. But that line was crossed within hours when Pyongyang announced it was “carefully examining” a plan for a missile strike and “enveloping fire” around Guam. 
 
 The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, also spent much of Wednesday struggling to contain the fallout from Trump’s threats, assuring Americans they could “sleep well at night”, and reassuring shocked allies that there was “no imminent threat of war”. 
 
 • This article was amended on 10 August 2017 to correct a statement from Joshua Pollack.
– North Korea says it's ready to deploy and start mass-producing a new medium-range missile capable of reaching Japan and major US military bases there following a test launch it claims confirmed the missile's combat readiness and is an "answer" to President Trump's policies. The solid-fuel Pukguksong-2 missile flew about 310 miles and reached a height of 350 miles Sunday before plunging into the Pacific Ocean. North Korea's media said more missiles will be launched in the future, the AP reports. Trump, traveling in Saudi Arabia, had no immediate public comment. Kim Jong Un ordered the launch and watched from an observation post, state media reported Monday. The Korea Central News Agency said the test verified technical aspects of the weapon system and examined its "adaptability under various battle conditions" before it's deployed to military units. Kim reportedly said the launch was a success, "approved the deployment of this weapon system for action," and said that it should "be rapidly mass-produced." Viewing images sent from the rocket, Kim noted, "It feels grand to look at the Earth from the rocket we launched," KCNA said, via Reuters. The North's Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary Sunday that in Pyongyang's "answer to the Trump administration," many more missiles "capable of striking the US will be launched from this land."