North Korea test-fired a short-range missile off its west coast last week in the first such launch for 19 months, South Korean sources said today. The launch was seen as a routine test to improve the country's missile capability, the sources said, declining to give details. Yonhap news agency quoted an intelligence source as saying that North Korea fired the KN-06 missile into the Yellow Sea in the middle of last week, apparently to test efforts to increase its range. JoongAng Ilbo newspaper also reported a launch of the KN-06 missile, which has a range of 100-110 km. It was the North's first known test of short-range missiles since October 2009, when it test-fired five KN-02 surface-to-surface missiles off its east coast.