seoul, April 21 -- North Korea said it tested a variant of its flagship ballistic missile in a launch hailed by leader Kim Jong-un, as the US shifts its focus to the Middle East while reports that Washington is restricting intelligence sharing with Seoul add to security concerns in the region. The country fired five tactical ballistic missiles, variants of its Hwasong-11, that hit their target area near an island about 136km away with "high precision" on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. Kim expressed "great satisfaction" over the results produced after five years of research, it said. "The purpose of the test-fire is to verify the characteristics and power of cluster bomb warhead and fragmentation mine warhead applied to the tactical ballistic missile," KCNA said. The test marks North Korea's second cluster bomb test in less than two weeks, a weapons system that Iran has used to attack Israel during the war in the Middle East. The series of weapons tests comes amid growing concerns over North Korea gaining real combat experience after sending its weapons and troops to Russia to support President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine. The Hwasong-11 is a short-range missile type also known as KN-23 or KN-24, which Ukraine has said Pyongyang supplied to Moscow for use in its war against Kyiv. "The launch demonstrates that the new national defence development plan unveiled at the 9th Party Congress is being implemented at a rapid pace," a spokesperson at the Unification Ministry in Seoul said at a briefing on Monday, referring to Kim's instruction to increase deployment of multiple rocket launchers and tactical missiles to deter South Korea. The test also took place as South Korean media reported that the US is limiting intelligence sharing on North Korea with Seoul after South Korea's Unification Minister Chung Dong-young publicly identified North Korea's uranium enrichment facility in Kusong. "We are aware of the media article and have nothing to add," US Forces Korea told Bloomberg News on Monday. "USFK works alongside our ROK ally every day to deter aggression and maintain peace and stability on the peninsula." Chung's office said the minister's comments were made based on publicly available information, not based on information shared by another agency....