People watch a television screen showing a news broadcast with file footage of a North Korean missile test, at a railway station in Seoul on September 13, 2023. (Photo: AFP)

The missile has a potential to travel more than 15,000 km, meaning it can reach anywhere in Japan and the mainland United States, Japan's Parliamentary Vice Minister of Defense Shingo Miyake said.

South Korea's National Security Council said it was a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), labelling the launch a destabilising act that ignored international warnings and multiple UN Security Council resolutions. 

President Yoon Suk Yeol had ordered the upgrading of the effective operation of "nuclear deterrence" by South Korea and the United States, it added.