Maritime Self Defence Force Chief of Staff Koichi Furusho told reporters earlier in the day that Japan had confirmed that a missile was test-fired by North Korea.

But some three hours later, Shoei Yamanaka, chief of the defence agency's secretariat, "corrected the remark," according to an agency spokesman.

"It was not right to say we had confirmed missile firing as a fact, but what is right is that we have obtained information suggesting missile firing," Yamanaka was quoted as saying.

"We are still checking details, including whether a missile was actually fired or not," the spokesman said, who refused to disclose the source of the apparently erroneous information.

The government's top spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda was cautious when asked about the alleged missile test-firing at a regular press conference.

"There is (such) information but we have not confirmed it," he said.

Shortly after the Japanese announcement of a missile firing, South Korea's defense ministry flatly rejected reports of North Korea's missile launch.

"There was no sign that North Korea test-fired a missile today," a ministry spokesman told AFP in Seoul. "That's our ministry's official stance on the issue."

The news on the missile firing broke after Land, Infrastructure and Transport minister Chikage Ogi announced the missile launch at the end of a parliamentary committee session.

"I just received a preliminary report that North Korea seems to have fired a surface-to-vessel missile at 10:15 am, that the launch site was Hwajinri in Pyongannamdo (province) on the opposite side (of the Korean Peninsula) from the previous launch site and that its range was 60 kilometres (38 miles) like the previous time," a ministry spokesman quoted Ogi as saying.

SPACE.WIRE