The launch Thursday - the North's fifth weapons test in a month - was overseen by leader Kim Jong-Un, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported, and came less than a week after the United Nations tightened sanctions against the Stalinist regime.
A set of photos carried by North Korea's main newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, on June 9, 2017, shows the test-firing of a new ground-to-ship cruise missile.
Pyongyang launched what appeared to be several land-to-sea missiles early on Thursday off its east coast, which flew about 200 km (124 miles), South Korea's military said.
The UN Security Council last Friday unanimously adopted a US-drafted resolution imposing new targeted sanctions on a handful of North Korean officials and entities, a move Pyongyang said was "mean".
The launches Thursday were North Korea's fourth missile test in as many weeks as the country continues to speed up its development of nuclear weapons and missiles.
Last month, North Korea premiered a powerful new midrange missile that outside experts said flew higher than any other missile previously tested by North Korea.
"North Korea fired multiple unidentified projectiles, assumed to be surface-to-ship cruise missiles, this morning from the vicinity of Wonsan, Gangwon Province", the defence ministry said.
USA ally Japan also hit out at Pyongyang.
"North Korea is carrying out carefully calibrated provocations... but restraining from ICBM tests or nuclear explosions which could bring about military retaliations by (US President Donald) Trump", he added.
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"We'll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis", Vice Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol said at the time.
Under Secretary of State Tom Shannon "affirmed the strength of the U.S. -Republic of Korea alliance" and "the need to sustain close coordination in addressing the threat from North Korea", during his meeting with South Korea's national security adviser Chung Eui-yong on June 1, a spokesperson told VOA.
The North's missile tests present a hard challenge to Moon, a liberal elected last month who has expressed a desire to reach out to Pyongyang.
A senior official from the presidential Blue House in Seoul said Wednesday that the two launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system that had been installed could remain but that four launchers yet to be placed would not be set up until the administration completed an environmental assessment.
This would be the fourth missile test by the nuclear- armed regime in less than five weeks, as Pyongyang continues to defy United Nations warnings and USA threats of possible military action.
Shortly afterwards, on May 30, the U.S. conducted its first ever test of a Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptor with a capacity to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), that Washington said was planned "years in advance".
"North Korea claimed that it tested a miniaturized nuclear warhead in 2016".
Two US aircraft carriers, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Ronald Reagan, have recently departed the Korean Peninsula after conducting exercises there in what a US official described as a message to North Korea.
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