(CNN) The same day that North Korea launched its latest intercontinental ballistic missile, former Secretary of State John Kerry called on US decision-makers to give diplomacy a chance.

"There's a false narrative about North Korea that has been purposefully promulgated ... that somehow diplomacy has failed, and therefore it is only 'fire' and 'fury' that is going to meet this challenge and be effective," Kerry said Tuesday.

Kerry's statement was a nod to President Donald Trump's statement in August that "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States" or "they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."

But the truth, Kerry said -- which is "depressingly ... absent from the American dialogue" -- is that "we have not exhausted diplomacy."

The former diplomat made his remarks just hours after North Korea launched what US and South Korean military analysts say was likely an intercontinental ballistic missile.

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