North Korea test-fires new long-range cruise missile

North Korea test-fired a new "long-range cruise missile" over the weekend, state media reported Monday, calling it a "strategic weapon of great significance" amid a long standoff with the United States over its nuclear programme.Pictures in the Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed a missile exiting one of five tubes on a launch vehicle in a ball of flame, and a missile in horizontal flight. Such a weapon would represent a marked advance in the North's weapons technology, analysts said, better able to avoid defence systems to deliver a warhead across the South or Japan.

The test launches took place on Saturday and Sunday, the official Korean Central News Agency said. The missiles travelled 1,500-kilometre (about 930 miles) flight paths -- including figure-of-8 patterns -- above North Korea and its territorial waters to hit their targets, according to KCNA. Its report called the missile a "strategic weapon of great significance", adding the tests were successful and it gave the country "another effective deterrence means" against "hostile forces".

The North is under international sanctions for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, which it says it needs to defend against a US invasion. But Pyongyang is not banned from developing cruise missiles, which it has tested previously. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff told AFP: "Our military is conducting a detailed analysis under close cooperation between the South Korean and US intelligence agencies." Nuclear talks with the United States have been stalled since the collapse of a 2019 summit in Hanoi between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then-president Donald Trump over sanctions relief -- and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return.