SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Thursday that his country had achieved the “success of all successes” in launching a missile from a submarine, saying it effectively gave the country a fully equipped nuclear attack capability and put the USA mainland within striking distance.
Advertisement
The DPRK test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday morning before the long-awaited meeting between Wang, Japan’s Fumio Kishida and the ROK’s Yun Byung-se in Tokyo. “This is the very first time that North Korea’s rocket landed in Japan’s air defense recognition zone”.
After North Korea fired a ballistic missile on August 3, the U.N. panel held talks to issue a statement to condemn the act, as strongly demanded by Japan and the United States.
Takesada also said a North Korean SLBM could strike Hawaii, even if launched from a non-nuclear submarine. Amid the increasing likelihood of North Korea’s SLBMs becoming a real threat, the controversy about the military efficacy of deploying THAAD with USA forces in South Korea is expected to be reignited.
The news agency also said North Korea launched its missile at a “high angle” from the maximum launching depth, indicating that it could have flown more than 500km if it had launched it at a normal angle.
The South Korean military statement said it considers the North Korean missile launch a challenge to peace on the Korean Peninsula and noted it violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban any ballistic missile activities by North Korea.
If fired at the optimum angle and fully fuelled, it could travel more than 2,500km, the source added.
South Korea and the United States began annual military drills Monday despite North Korea’s threat of nuclear strikes in response to the exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal.
A missile is purportedly launched in this photo distributed by the North Korean government on Thursday.
Encouraged by the success of Wednesday’s test, Kim has called on individuals involved in national defense science “to put increased spurs to mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles” in order to deal with the possibility of an “unpredicted total war and nuclear war with the USA imperialists”. The test launch is believed to be part of North Korea’s SLBM development project, which North Korea has pushed ahead with during a time of faltering cooperation between its neighbors in Northeast Asia because of the conflict over the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system.
In the West, missile tests are usually conducted with a four- to six-month gap, but North Korea has conducted its missile tests just weeks apart and sometimes two in a day. It appears to be trying to work on its intermediate-range Musudan missile, which can theoretically reach Guam, and its submarine-launched missiles, which would give it the ability to stage an attack from sea.
After a meeting with top naval commanders in the fleet, Jung said: “If the enemy’s submarines launch provocations, do not fail to track them down and destroy them”. The most recent KN-11 launches – three in the past year – were all deemed failures because the missiles exploded at launch or traveled only a short distance.
US and South Korean officials say it is too soon to tell whether the new sanctions, which primarily seek to cut off North Korea’s sources of foreign currency for its nuclear-missile program, are having an effect.
The latest launch was widely condemned.
Advertisement
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon censured the test-fire as “deeply troubling” and in defiance of the “united call of the global community to reverse its course” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
