NK ‘launches’ ballistic missile from submarine
Print Edition
NORTH Korea said yesterday that it successfully test-fired a newly developed ballistic missile from a submarine in what would be the latest display of the country’s advancing military capabilities.
Hours after the announcement, South Korean military officials said North Korea fired three anti-ship cruise missiles into its eastern sea.
North Korea also said for the second straight day that it will fire without warning at South Korean naval vessels that it claims have been violating its territorial waters off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea’s presidential Blue House held an emergency national security council meeting to review the threat and discuss possible countermeasures.
Experts in Seoul said North Korea’s military demonstrations and hostile rhetoric are attempts at wresting concessions from the United States and South Korea, whose officials have recently talked about the possibility of holding preliminary talks with North Korea to test its commitment to denuclearization.
“By raising tensions, North Korea is trying to ensure that it will be able to drive whatever future talks with the US and South Korea,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor from the Seoul-based University of North Korean Studies.
Officials from South Korea previously said that North Korea was developing technologies for launching ballistic missiles from underwater, although past tests were believed to have been conducted on platforms built on land or at sea and not from submarines.
Security experts said that North Korea acquiring the ability to launch missiles from submarines would be an alarming development because missiles fired from submerged vessels are harder to detect before launch. North Korea already has a considerable arsenal of land-based ballistic missiles and is also believed to be advancing in efforts to miniaturize nuclear warheads to mount on such missiles, according to South Korean officials.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally directed the submarine test launch and called the missile a “world-level strategic weapon” and an “eye-opening success,” said North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency. The report did not reveal the timing or location of the launch.
Kim said North Korea now has a weapon capable of “striking and wiping out in any waters the hostile forces infringing upon the sovereignty and dignity (of North Korea).”
North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper published photos of a projectile rising from the surface and Kim smiling from a distance at what looked like a floating submarine.
The test might have taken place near the eastern coastal city of Sinpo, where satellite imagery appeared to show North Korea building missile-testing facilities.
South Korea’s defense ministry made no immediate comment, but officials previously said that North Korea has about 70 submarines and appears to be mainly imitating Russian designs in its efforts to develop a system for submarine-launched missiles.
Uk Yang, a Seoul-based security expert, said it is unlikely that North Korea has a submarine big enough to carry and fire multiple missiles.
But it’s hard to deny that North Korea is making progress on dangerous weapons technology, he said.
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