Defense Secretary James Mattis James Norman MattisBiden courts veterans amid fallout from Trump military controversies Trump says he wanted to take out Syria's Assad but Mattis opposed it Gary Cohn: 'I haven't made up my mind' on vote for president in November MORE said Tuesday that North Korea's latest ballistic missile flew higher than any of its previous launches.

"A little over two-and-a-half hours ago, North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. It went higher, frankly, than any previous shot they've taken," Mattis said at a White House meeting alongside President Trump.

Mattis said South Korea fired "pinpoint missiles" into the sea as a show of force following the North's latest launch and that Pyongyang's continued development of missiles "can threaten everywhere in the world basically."

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"The bottom line is it is a continued effort to build a ballistic missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace and certainly the United States," he said.