"The United States condemns the DPRK's missile launch. This launch is in violation of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions and poses a threat to the DPRK's neighbors and other members of the international community," a State Department spokesperson said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

But the spokesperson added: "We remain committed to a diplomatic approach to the DPRK and call on them to engage in dialogue."

President Joe Biden's administration said in an April policy review on North Korea that the United States was willing to engage Pyongyang.

But it also signaled it was looking more for a practical approach following the unusual personal diplomacy of previous president Donald Trump, who met three times with the authoritarian state's young leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump said he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for preventing war, but North Korea never signed a permanent agreement to end its nuclear program.

Pyongyang is under sweeping international sanctions over a series of nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests.

The State Department spokesperson said that US commitment to the defense of South Korea -- which carried out its own submarine-launched ballistic missile test Wednesday -- and Japan "remains ironclad."