North Korea has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) but it failed mid-flight, says the South Korean military.
The ICBM launch, the North’s seventh this year, sparked an alert in Japan – but fell short, landing in the sea.
Tensions are escalating amid fears the North will soon conduct a nuclear test.
On Wednesday both Koreas fired missiles near each other’s waters. The exchange saw the most number of missiles launched by the North in a single day.
North Korea’s multiple launches comes as the US and South Korea are staging their largest-ever joint air drills, which Pyongyang has strongly criticised as “aggressive and provocative”.
On Thursday North Korea fired a long-range missile at around 07:40 local time (23:40 GMT), according to a statement from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. A source confirmed with the BBC that it was an ICBM.
It flew for about 760km (472 miles) and reached a height of around 1,920 km.
But the launch was “presumed to have ended in failure”, South Korea’s military said.
Pyongyang also fired two short-range ballistic missiles.
The launches led the Japanese government to issue a rare emergency alert on Thursday morning to residents in some of its northern regions, telling them to stay indoors.
Tokyo initially said the missile had flown over Japan, but Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada later said it did “not cross the Japanese archipelago, but disappeared over the Sea of Japan”.
