WASHINGTON — Setting off a potential diplomatic and military firestorm, North Korea yesterday violated a seven-year missile-test ban by firing one long-range and five medium-range ballistic missiles, flights that apparently ended harmlessly in the Sea of Japan but drew a stern rebuke from the Bush administration.

As Americans celebrated Independence Day and NASA launched the space shuttle Discovery, North Korea made good on a threat to test its long-range Taepodong-2 missile, according to Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser. American experts believe the missile has a range of about 9,300 miles — enough to carry a warhead to the United States.

In what was seen as an almost taunting display, Pyongyang also launched as many as five shorter-range missiles — known as Nodong missiles, which are based on the Soviet Scud missile design, Hadley said.

Hadley called the tests "provocative behavior," but did not say how the U.S. would respond.

Referring to Bush, he said, "I think his instinct is that this just shows the defiance of the international community by North Korea."

Reports from Japan's Kyodo news agency said North Korea fired a seventh missile at 5:22 p.m. today (10:22 p.m. yesterday, Hawai'i time). The missile landed six minutes later, the report said.

U.S. defense officials could not immediately verify the claim, but the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the launch, and one South Korean military official said it was a medium-range missile.

Yesterday, the White House issued a statement condemning North Korea's "unwillingness to heed calls for restraint from the international community" and accusing North Korea of trying to "intimidate other states."

Japan also stopped chartered flights from North Korea and banned a North Korean ferry from entering its waters for six months, chief government spokesman Shinzo Abe said. The North Korean ferry is a major conduit of trade between the two countries, which have no diplomatic relations.

South Korea said the launches would further deepen its neighbor's international isolation, and Australia and Russia denounced the tests as provocative.

Australia's foreign minister said he expected North Korea would conduct more such tests before the end of the week.

"We think they probably do intend to launch more missiles in the next day or two," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said after phoning North Korea's ambassador to Australia to lodge a protest.

"I think what we've learned is something about capabilities," Hadley said. "The fact that they can fire Scuds and Nodongs is not a surprise. The Taepodong is a failure. That tells you something about capabilities. What we really don't have a fix on is what is the intention of all this, what is the purpose of all this.

"They have basically defied the international community. It's hard to get a sense of what they think could be achieved by this."

Bush conferred with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the tests, said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Snow added that Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator on the North's nuclear weapons program, would head to the region today.

The U.N. Security Council called an emergency meeting for this morning and Japan said it would introduce a resolution protesting the tests.

A North Korean foreign ministry official defended the missile tests as a matter of national sovereignty, a Japanese TV report aired in South Korea said.

The footage, by the Japanese TBS network and broadcast by South Korea's YTN, showed Ri Pyong Dok, a researcher on Japanese affairs at the North's Foreign Ministry, saying no one can interfere in Pyongyang's missile program.

"The missile launch is an issue that is entirely within our sovereignty. No one has the right to dispute about it," he said. "On the missile launch, we are not bound by any agreement."

The confirmation would be the first by the North.

Previously, U.S. officials have suggested that North Korea, already isolated economically, would be the subject of even more stringent economic penalties if it carried out a test of the Taepodong-2 missile.

A U.S. Defense Department official confirmed the launch of the medium-range missiles yesterday afternoon but said details of the tests were still being examined.

Hadley said one missile was fired from a North Korean missile site at 2:33 p.m. Eastern time (8:33 a.m. Hawaii time), and that it landed short of Japan. A second short-range missile was fired about a half-hour later, he said, and also landed short of Japan. The Taepodong-2 was launched at 4:01 p.m. (10:01 a.m. Hawaii time) and apparently vanished a minute into flight.

All the missiles apparently landed within 400 miles of the Japanese coast, with the last landing approximately 312 miles northwest of Japan's western city of Niigata, Japanese officials said.

The U.S. Northern Command in Colorado said it was "immediately able to detect the launch of all the missiles and all of them landed in the Sea of Japan." The command added that it was "able to determine quickly the missiles posed no threat to the United States or its territories."

North Korea's tests are sure to elicit a stern diplomatic response within the United Nations, where warnings have been issued over the prospects of a missile test. Since 2002, North Korea has increasingly taunted the West and its neighbors, primarily Japan, by escalating efforts to develop and deploy nuclear weapons, and the missiles that can carry them.

For its part, the United States is developing a multibillion-dollar defense system to shield against rogue missile attacks. Pentagon officials insist that the system, while far from complete, could be deployed in an emergency. The system was not deployed yesterday, according to the U.S. Northern Command.

To counter the missile threat, the United States plans to send Japan four defensive Patriot missile batteries to be stationed on Okinawa by the end of the year.

That system would be capable of shooting down shorter-range Nodong missiles, but not the higher flying Taepodong-2.

Meanwhile, the North American Aerospace Defense Command — which monitors the skies for threats to North American security — had been put on heightened alert in the past two weeks, said NORAD spokesman Michael Kucharek.

The current "Bravo-Plus" status is slightly higher than a medium threat level, he said.

The North Korean missiles were launched within minutes of yesterday's liftoff of Discovery, which blasted into orbit from Cape Canaveral in the first U.S. space shuttle launch in a year.

Hadley suggested the tests might have been an attempt to grab the international spotlight.

"It's very difficult to know what the North Koreans think they are doing this for," he said. "Obviously, it is a bit of an effort to get attention, perhaps because so much attention has been focused on the Iranians."

North Korea's missile program is based on Scud technology provided by the former Soviet Union or Egypt, according to American and South Korean officials.

North Korea had observed a moratorium on long-range missile launches since 1999. It shocked the world in 1998 by firing a Taepodong missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service, the Washington Post and Associated Press contributed to this report.