NORTH Korea launched a missile into the sea today, hours after announcing plans to put a rocket into orbit that will apparently carry its second spy satellite.

Pyongyang had earlier notified Japan’s coastguard of plans to launch “a satellite rocket,” at some point between today and midnight next Monday, drawing rebukes from South Korea and Japan.

The coastguard said it had been told of the planned “satellite rocket” launch, with a warning to exercise caution in the waters between the Korean peninsula and China and east of the main Philippine island of Luzon until midnight on June 3.

North Korea provides Japan with launch information because Japan’s coastguard co-ordinates maritime safety information in east Asia.

North Korea sent its first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit last November as part of efforts to build a space-based surveillance network to counter increasing US-led military threats.

Supreme leader Kim Jong Un later told a meeting of the ruling Workers Party of Korea that three additional spy satellites would be launched this year.

The announcement of the planned rocket launch coincided with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida meeting Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Seoul for their first trilateral talks in more than four years.

Satellite launches by Pyongyang are banned under United Nations security council resolutions on the grounds that they could provide cover for testing long-range missile technology.

“If North Korea presses ahead with its launch despite the international warning, I think the international community must sternly deal with it,” Mr Yoon said at the start of the meeting with Mr Kishida and Mr Li.

Mr Kishida strongly urged North Korea to scrap the launch, but the Chinese premier did not specifically mention the North Korean satellite.