"North Korea conducted a missile firing drill today as part of its annual military training," JCS spokesman Kim Hyoung-Kyu said.

He did not say exactly when and where the surface-to-ship missile was launched.

Kim downplayed the test, saying it was part of North Korea's "routine" military exercises which were closely monitored in South Korea.

"We have witnessed such tests three times this year," he said.

In a test in April, North Korea fired short-range anti-ship missiles from its eastern coast into the Sea of Japan.

Officials accompanying Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit that started in Bangkok Monday said they were trying to confirm the North's missile test.

"There is information that a missile was fired on the east coast (of North Korea) but it is unconfirmed," Koizumi's spokesman Jiro Okuyama said.

North Korea's development of missiles, particularly long-range ballistic ones, has sparked concern for years in Japan and the United States.

The impoverished Stalinist state is known to have deployed short-range Soviet-developed Scud missiles while developing longer-range ballistic missiles codenamed Rodong and Taepodong.

Pyongyang alarmed Tokyo in August 1998 by test-launching a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles), claiming it was a satellite launch.

Washington is worried that the Stalinist state could deploy ballistic missiles capable of hitting US territory with concerns over its suspected possession of nuclear weapons doubling the security alarm.

The United States and North Korea have been locked in a standoff since last October on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions, after a senior US official accused the state of breaching a 1994 anti-nuclear pact by pursuing a nuclear development program.

SPACE.WIRE