Kim announces new goals for the country's military for 2023 at an ongoing meeting of ruling Workers' Party, hinting at another year of intensive weapons tests and tension.
If the US continues to make threats, Pyongyang "will resolutely react to nukes with nuclear weapons and to total confrontation with all-out confrontation," state media quotes leader Kim Jong-un as saying.
Launch comes as navies of South Korea, US and Japan stage trilateral anti-submarine exercises for the first time in five years.
The four-day exercise on South Korea's east coast will involve more than 20 vessels and an assortment of aircraft, which will conduct drills on anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare operations.
"Our intelligence does reflect the genuine possibility" of nuclear-capable missile tests or a nuclear weapon test around the time of US President Biden's trip, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan says.
The country's news state agency said the test involved cameras for a reconnaissance satellite conducting vertical and oblique photography of a specific area of Earth.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry claimed that North Korea is the only country standing up to the United States with its advanced weapons and missiles.
China’s UN ambassador says the US should come up with “more attractive and more practical” policies to decrease tensions amid Pyongyang's intensified missile tests.
The official Korean news agency confirmed Thursday's missiles test and ran photographs of Kim inspecting a munitions factory.
Pyongyang has conducted a string of weapons tests, including hypersonic missiles, as leader Kim Jong-un pursues his avowed goal of further strengthening the military.
US was swift to respond, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to "take a different course" and stressing that the US wanted "peace not confrontation" with the North.
Even North Korea's ally China supported the sanctions as did Russia. The sanctions which are expected to his a third of Pyongyang's exports come in the wake of continued missile tests.
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