North Korean state media said Kim Jong Un oversaw a Saturday intermediate-range missile drill that it claimed flew 1,000 km. South Korea assessed a flight of more than 700 km.
North Korea said leader Kim Jong Un oversaw an intermediate-range missile launch on Saturday from the country's east toward the sea. The Korean Central News Agency said the missile hit a target 1,000 kilometres offshore and that the drill trained troops on a hypersonic strategic system.
South Korea's military said it detected a ballistic missile and assessed that it flew more than 700 kilometres toward the sea east of the peninsula, Reuters reported. Japan said the missile landed outside its exclusive economic zone, according to an Associated Press account carried by the South China Morning Post. The distance claims were not identical.
KCNA, quoted by Reuters, said Kim's sister Kim Yo Jong argued that South Korea and Japan had failed to track the weapon and cited a wave-like trajectory. AP reported that she also claimed artificial-intelligence features and a low-altitude path change. Those performance claims are Pyongyang's, and South Korea often disputes Northern technical descriptions.
The launch followed a dispute over landmine blasts in the Demilitarized Zone. Seoul has demanded an apology for a blast it blamed on the North that wounded three South Korean soldiers. Pyongyang has not accepted that account in the reports reviewed here.
No independent tracking dataset was published in the wire stories beyond the South Korean and Japanese assessments. Photos released by KCNA showed a missile launch, Reuters said, but those images were not available as stable public files for this brief.