INTERNATIONAL: A projectile North Korea has fired on Thursday afternoon, appeared to be a new model of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), given it had reached an altitude of more than 6,000 kilometres , Japan's vice defence minister Makoto Oniki has said.

North Korea has again conducted what is thought to be its largest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test ever on Thursday, militaries in South Korea and Japan have claimed, marking a dramatic end to a self-imposed moratorium on long-range testing.

"Our current analysis is that the ballistic missile that was launched flew about 71 minutes, and at around 15:44 or 3:44 in the afternoon of Thursday, we presumed it fell in the Sea of Japan in our Exclusive Economic Zone , about 150 kilometres west of Hokkaido's Oshima Peninsula," Japan’s vice defence minister Oniki has told reporters.

It would be the first full-capability launch of the nuclear-armed state's largest missiles since 2017, and represents a major step in the North's development of weapons that might be able to deliver nuclear warheads anywhere in the United States.