North Korea

Sabrina Singh, deputy spokesperson for the defence department, made the remark as she highlighted the possibility of a North Korean nuclear test in the near future, Yonhap news agency reported. "We are in very close touch with our allies and partners in the region, and should there be such a test, we would be able to respond quickly if needed," Singh said when asked about the possibility of a North Korean nuclear test.

"Over the last week and a half the DPRK has exacerbated an extremely worrisome trend that we've seen all year; an increasing number of (missile) launches in flagrant violation of the Security Council Resolution, destabilising and threatening rhetoric and continue escalation," the US diplomat said at an emergency meeting of the Security Council held in New York.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the missile firing from a site in or around the North's eastern coastal city of Wonsan was detected at around 8.51 a.m., reports Yonhap News Agency. One of the three SRBMs fell into high seas 26 km south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), an area 57 km east of the South's eastern city of Sokcho and 167 km northwest of Ulleung Island near Dokdo.

A spokesman at the North's Foreign Ministry denounced the ongoing combined air drills by the allies, called Vigilant Storm, as "ceaseless and reckless" military provocations, reports Yonhap News Agency. The exercise is "a war drill for aggression mainly aimed at striking the strategic targets of the DPRK in case of contingency in the Korean Peninsula", the spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The US-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies produced the data on the North's testing of missiles capable of delivering a payload of at least 500 kg at a distance of at least 300 km, reports Yonhap News Agency. Of the 204 missiles tested by the North since 1984, 156 were classified as successes, 32 as failures and the rest as "unknown", according to the institute's data posted on the Nuclear Threat Initiative's website.

"Our concern regarding the potential for another North Korean nuclear test, which would be its seventh, has been consistent for some time now. We assess that the DPRK is preparing its Punggye-ri test site for what would be its seventh test," Price said in a daily press briefing, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

A North Korean merchant vessel violated the NLL in waters near the front-line island of Baengnyeong at 3.42 a.m. and it retreated northwards after the South's Navy issued warning messages and fired some 20 rounds of warning shots, according to the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

On Wednesday, the North fired two long-range strategic cruise missiles that flew for "10,234 seconds along an oval and pattern-8 flight orbits in the sky above the West Sea of Korea and clearly hit the target 2,000 km away", Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a report.

In a statement, North Korea's National Aviation Administration (NAA) said: "The missile test launch by the DPRK is a regular and planned self-defensive step for defending the country's security and the regional peace from the US direct military threats that have lasted for more than half a century."

India's Permanent Representative Ruchira Kamboj joined US Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Wednesday to issue a joint statement, along with nine other countries, to "strongly condemn North Korea's long-range ballistic missile launch which overflew Japan on October 4 and its seven other ballistic missile launches conducted since September 25".