BDA Funds Deposited in NK Account: Hill

North Korea test-launched a short-range missile again on Tuesday as international efforts to end the communist nation's nuclear program began showing signs of progress, South Korean defense officials said.

"We don't deny that North Korea fired a missile," Army Col. Ha Doo-chul, spokesman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Yonhap News Agency. "If it did, we regard it as a routine exercise."

Earlier in the day, a Japanese Defense official said the reclusive communist nation fired a missile with a range of 100 km into the East Sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan

in what appeared to be part of a military drill.

The test fire of the missile has become cool water on the probable progress of the denuclearization of the North in the wake of the reported complete transfer of the North Korean funds at a Macau bank to its bank account.

Earlier, US chief nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill also sounded an upbeat note about progress towards disarming North Korea's nuclear capability.

Upon arrival in Tokyo, Hill told reporters that Pyongyang now had access to funds which had been trapped in a Macau bank for many years.

The issue had been a continual sticking point for progress towards disarmament.

"My understanding is that today, [the money] was deposited in North Korean accounts in Russia," Hill told reporters.