North Korea announced early Thursday that it conducted the first test of a new generation of strategic cruise missiles it is developing, the "Pukguksong-3-31," as part of what it called its "routine and obligatory" activities to develop and upgrade weapons systems.

North Korea's Central News Agency stated that the missile was launched on Wednesday and did not affect the safety of neighboring countries nor was it related to regional security.

It added that "the launch experiment is a continuous process of updating the weapons system and a regular and obligatory activity" of the General Missile Bureau and its affiliated Defense Science Institutes.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff announced on Wednesday that North Korea launched several cruise missiles towards the Yellow Sea, in what is considered the latest in a series of operations escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

This represents the first cruise missile launch by North Korea since the last launch in September 2023, when it tested two long-range strategic cruise missiles with dummy nuclear warheads towards the Yellow Sea.

The recent launch comes 10 days after Pyongyang tested the launch of a solid-fueled intermediate-range ballistic missile carrying a hypersonic warhead into the East Sea in the first missile launch it conducted this year.

Tensions remain high along the border between the Koreas, where buffer zones established under the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement were canceled after North Korea conducted live-fire drills near the western maritime border earlier this month.