North Korea's latest missile launch was a successful test of a new type of "ground-to-sea cruise rocket", state media said Friday, according to AFP.
The official KCNA news agency said the rocket was a "powerful attack means capable of striking any enemy group of battleships attempting at military attack on the DPRK (North Korea) from the ground at will".
KCNA claimed that the missiles "accurately detected and hit the floating targets on the East Sea of Korea".
The latest test, Pyongyang's fifth in less than a month was launched in defiance of global pressure to rein in its weapons program.
The country has ordered three ballistic missile launches, a surface-to-air missile, and now Thursday's cruise missile tests since South Korea's President Moon Jae-in took power in early May.
Last week, North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile that landed in Japan's maritime economic zone, prompting protest from both Tokyo and Seoul.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, who personally supervised the test, later expressed conviction that the country "would make a greater leap forward in this spirit to send a bigger 'gift package' to the Yankees."
A week before that test, North Korea test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile, which it claimed was also supervised by Kim.
The launches come less than a week after the United Nations expanded sanctions against Kim's regime in response to recent ballistic missile tests.
The West is concerned that North Korea may be on a path to developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
North Korea has declared that it could test-launch an ICBM “at any time” from any location set by Kim, though it remains unclear whether any of its recent tests have been of an ICBM.