A South Korean defense ministry official told Xinhua that the DPRK test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) at about 5:30 a.m. local time (2030 GMT Tuesday) off the eastern coastal town of Sinpo in South Hamgyeong province into the East Sea.
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A North Korean submarine fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday that flew about 500 km (311 miles) towards Japan, a show of improving technological capability for the isolated country that has conducted a series of launches in defiance of United Nations sanctions.
Seoul officials condemned the launch as an “armed protest” against the start of annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that North Korean calls an invasion rehearsal.
North Korea has fired a ballistic missile from a submarine off its east coast, according to United States and South Korean officials.
People pass by a TV news program showing file footage of North Korea’s ballistic missile that the North claimed to have launched from underwater, at Seoul Station, Wednesday.
Experts said that if the North succeeds in firing off SLBMs, it can pose a fresh threat to regional security as they are particularly hard to detect before they are launched.
TENSIONS IN KOREAS: Rattling nerves in northeast Asia, North Korea fired a ballistic missile from a submarine early Wednesday.
Joshua Pollack, editor of the US -based Nonproliferation Review, said a claim to having mastered the SLBM technology is as much about prestige as a military breakthrough, a status enjoyed only by six countries including the United States, Russia and China.
“We strongly condemn this and North Korea’s other recent missile tests, which violate UN Security Council Resolutions explicitly prohibiting North Korea’s launches using ballistic missile technology”, said Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross.
The projectile reached Japan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ), an area of control designated by countries to help maintain air security, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.
Relations between the three big Asian economies are often hard with the legacy of Japan’s wartime aggression affecting ties between it and China and South Korea, territorial disputes hurting links between Japan and China, and Japan and South Korea, and China suspicious of the others’ US ties.The meeting marked the first visit to Japan by a Chinese foreign minister since the Japanese government took over three of the tiny islands at the centre of a dispute with China, from private Japanese owners in September 2012.
Panmunjom, jointly overseen by North Korea and the U.N. Command, is where an armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War was signed and is now a popular tourist spot for visitors from both sides.
Much of the border, one of the world’s most unsafe flashpoints, is strewn with land mines and laced with barbed wire.
The missile was tracked over and into the Sea of Japan, around 480 kilometres off the coast of North Korea.
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North Korea’s state media didn’t immediately respond to the U.N. Command statement.
