N Korea tests new nuclear missile

North Korea test-fired a new “long-range cruise missile”, state media reported, as the US warned the nuclear-armed rogue nation was now threatening its neighbours and beyond.

Pictures showed a missile being fired from a launch vehicle in a ball of flame, as well as a missile in horizontal flight.

Such a weapon would mark a significant advance in North Korea’s missile technology, analysts said, as it could better avoid defence systems to strike either South Korea or Japan.

Two missiles travelled 1500km on two-hour flight paths – including figure-of-eight patterns – above North Korea and its territorial waters to hit their targets, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Its report called the missile a “strategic weapon of great significance”, adding the tests were successful and they gave the country “another effective deterrence means” against “hostile forces”. North Korea is under international sanctions for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, which it claims it needs to defend against a US invasion.

The missile “poses a considerable threat”, Park Won-gon, professor of North Korean Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said. “If the North has sufficiently miniaturised a nuclear warhead, it could be loaded onto a cruise missile.”