North Korea

Making an on-site inspection of the test, Kim stressed his country would be "fully ready for long-standing confrontation with the US imperialists", Yonhap News Agency quoted the KCNA report as saying. Thursday's missile launch was tracked by militaries in Japan and South Korea - Japanese officials said it flew to an altitude of 6,000 km, and fell in Japanese waters after flying for more than an hour, the BBC reported.

The military shot the missiles from ground, sea and air from around the East Sea hours after the North launched an intercontinental ballistic missile into the sea, Yonhap News Agency quoted the JCS as saying. Assets mobilised were a Hyunmoo-2 ground-to-ground missile and one ATACMS missile as well as a Haesung-II ship-to-ground missile and two JDAM air-to-surface missiles, it said

The remarks came after President Joe Biden warned of Russian cyber attacks, Yonhap news agency reported. "All I can say generally is that North Korea cyber capabilities have been manifest in the world and they work with all kinds of cyber criminals around the world, including Russian cyber criminals," Sullivan said in a press briefing. Sullivan did not provide any other details, saying "I've got nothing further for you on that today."

South Korea's National Security Council held an emergency vice-ministerial meeting over the four shots that fell into the western waters during a span of an hour from 7.20 a.m. from an unspecified location in South Pyongan Province, Yonhap News Agency quoted the officials as saying. "There were shots believed to be that of North Korea's multiple rocket launchers this morning," an official of the South Korean military said.

The North fired a projectile from the Sunan area in Pyongyang that appeared to have exploded in midair at an altitude below 20 km, Yonhap news agency reported, citing informed sources. The North's tightly controlled official media, including the Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, did not carry any reports on the launch on Thursday morning.They usually report on such tests, if presumed successful, the next morning.

On Friday, the US Treasury Department said the two Russian individuals and three companies have been helping Park Kwang-hun, a North Korean representative based in Vladivostok who was designated by both Washington and the UN in 2018 for procuring supplies for the North's illicit weapons programmes, Yonhap News Agency reported.

North Korea's two most recent missile launches were aimed at testing a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system ahead of a possible full-fledged ICBM test, a senior US official has said, adding the US plans to take action that will hinder Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs. North Korea earlier confirmed launching missiles on February 27 and March 4, claiming they were aimed at developing a reconnaissance satellite, Yonhap news agency reported.

The Embassy of North Korea in Islamabad has lodged a protest with the chief of the Pakistani capital city's police over a raid at its premises earlier this week, saying the incident was a violation of the Vienna Convention, Dawn new reported. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the official name of the North. The police officials damaged the door and broke into a room in the basement, Dawn new quoted the letter as saying.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country's recent development of a reconnaissance satellite is aimed at collecting information on the US military and its "vassal forces", Pyongyang's state media reported on Thursday. On March 5, North Korea fired a ballistic missile in a second such test in less than a week that Pyongyang claimed was for developing a reconnaissance satellite, reports Yonhap News Agency.

"He (Kim) expressed his great satisfaction over the fact that they confirmed the aerospace photographing method, the operating characteristics of high-resolution photographing equipment and the reliability of image transmission system through the recent important tests," the North's Korean Central News Agency was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.