North Korea 'launches missile', sparking 'take shelter' alert in Japan

North Korea has launched a missile into the sea, Japan and South Korea said, hours after Pyongyang announced plans to put a rocket into orbit apparently carrying its second military reconnaissance satellite.

North Korea had earlier notified Japan’s coast guard about its plans to launch “a satellite rocket” during a launch window from Monday through June 3. Japanese officials lifted a missile alert issued for the island of Okinawa following North Korea’s launch, saying that the missile was believed not to be headed for its region.

South Korean news title The Korea Times reported that the South’s military said North Korea had “launched an unidentified projectile”, after announcing a satellite launch plan.

The North is said to have launched the projectile southwards over the Yellow Sea, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a message to reporters without providing further details, including where it was launched from. No further details have been released.

North Korea sent its first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit in November last year as part of efforts to build a space-based surveillance network to cope with what it calls increasing US-led military threats. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later told a ruling party meeting that the country would launch three additional military spy satellites in 2024.

The UN bans North Korea from conducting any satellite launches, viewing them as covers for testing long-range missile technology. North Korea has steadfastly maintained it has the right to launch satellites and test missiles.

Mr Kim has said spy satellites will allow his military to better monitor US and South Korean military activities and enhance the threat posed by its nuclear-capable missiles. North Korea provides Japan with its launch information because Japan’s coast guard co-ordinates and distributes maritime safety information in East Asia.

In April last year, a missile launched by North Korea sparked confusion and panic in Japan, where an evacuation order was issued and then retracted within half an hour. Sirens blared across Japan’s Hokkaido Island, with residents being told to “evacuate immediately” on April 13, 2023, but the alert was withdrawn when the projectile fell into the sea.

At the time officials from South Korea called the move a “grave provocation”. The country’s military, which has said it is on high alert, believe North Korea may have been testing a new, harder-to-detect weapons system - possibly using solid fuel.

The United States, which “strongly condemned” the incident, said in a statement that the launch had been a long-range ballistic missile test. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said his government will hold a National Security Council meeting to discuss what had happened. It was the 28th missile that North Korea had fired that year.

38 North, a website that analyses North Korea’s actions and policy, says so far this year the country has been testing land attack cruise missiles, which “[supplement] North Korea’s much larger force of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.”

This year, debris that landed in Kharkiv in Ukraine on January 2 was from a North Korean ballistic missile, the UN said.