SEOUL, August 24. /TASS/. North Korea has test fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile in the East China Sea, Yonhap news agency reported.

The news agency cited the South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) as saying that the submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) was test fired at 5:30 a.m. local time from waters near the city of Sinpo.

According to Yonhap, the missile covered a distance of about 500 kilometers (311 miles) and "fell in Japan's air defense identification zone."

The launch of the ballistic missile comes two days after South Korea and the United States began their annual large-scale military drills in the region involving some 75,000 troops.

North Korea slammed the joint drills of its south neighbor with the United States as hostile saying they posed threat to security on the Korean Peninsula.

The U.S.-led large-scale joint military exercise in collusion with the South Korean forces despite repeated warnings of the DPRK is a grave military provocation aimed to launch a preemptive nuclear attack on the DPRK and a challenge to regional peace and stability in every way," JA Song Nam, North Korea’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said in his statement addressed to the UN Security Council.

"The U.S. war games clearly prove that it is the U.S. which instigates the vicious cycles of escalating confrontation and tension and creating the danger of war on the Korean peninsula," he said.

"The U.S.-south Korea joint military exercises constitute a grave threat to the DPRK as well as international peace and security and deserve urgent consideration by the Security Council," the North Korean diplomat added.