North Korea test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Thursday, in a show of military force just hours before a landmark meeting between the leaders of South Korea and Japan in Tokyo.

The launch, Pyongyang’s fourth weapons test in eight days and its first ICBM test in a month, also comes as South Korea and US troops carry out their largest joint military drills in five years, aimed at streamlining their defence capabilities on the Korean Peninsula.

Thursday’s rare meeting between Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president, and Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister, has been hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough that could forge stronger ties between the historic rivals to counter the rising North Korean nuclear threat and China’s military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.

The test-fire of the ICBM, a missile with a range capable of striking the United States mainland, underscored the nature of the escalating military threat facing US allies in the region.

White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson in a statement said the US "strongly condemns" the latest ballistic missile test.

South Korea’s military said it flew towards the Peninsula’s eastern waters after being launched from North Korea’s capital Pyongyang around 7.10am.

Yasukazu Hamada, Japan’s defence minister, said the missile likely landed in the waters outside Japan's exclusive economic zone after about an hour-long flight, at a site about 155 miles off the western island of Oshimaoshima, close to where other North Korean ICBMs fell in recent months after test-flights.

The South Korea-Japan summit, the first in 12 years, was agreed after President Yoon’s government offered an olive branch to Tokyo to resolve a festering feud over WW2 labour abuses with a new Korean-funded compensation deal for survivors.

Joe Biden, the US president, praised the move as a new chapter of cooperation between two of Washington’s closest allies.

The thorny issue of wartime compensation has complicated a US bid to forge deeper links between the two Asian nations at a time when North Korea is escalating its nuclear weapons programme and Beijing is exerting its economic and military influence across the Indo-Pacific and threatening Taiwan.

"President Yoon and Prime Minister Kishida are taking a critical step to forge a future for the Korean and Japanese people that is safer, more secure, and more prosperous," said Mr Biden in a statement last week.

"When fully realised, their steps will help us to uphold and advance our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Analysts have urged caution in drawing premature conclusions about the wider regional impact of the compensation deal.

Leif Eric-Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said it was too soon to say if the proposal represented a strategic shift in Asia.

But he added: “Leaders in Seoul and Tokyo understand the pressing demands of geopolitics and will likely move quickly to increase cooperation on trade security, intelligence sharing, and trilateral defense exercises with the United States.”