A statement from South Korea’s military Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile, launched in the early morning from a submarine in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), flew around 500 kilometres – a substantial improvement on similar tests in the past.
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U.S. Strategic Command said it had tracked the North Korean submarine launch of the presumed KN-11 missile over and into the Sea of Japan.
“This provocation only serves to increase the global community’s resolve to counter the DPRK’s prohibited activities, including through implementing existing UN Security Council sanctions”.
Tensions are high on the divided peninsula as North Korea threatened on Monday to wage a “pre-emptive nuclear strike” on South Korea and the U.S. against the allies’ annual military exercise.
North Korea has threatened nuclear strikes in response to the exercises which it calls an invasion rehearsal.
The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea criticized North Korea’s latest submarine missile test on Wednesday during their annual talks that were held amid lingering frictions over territorial disputes and wartime history.
The launch appeared to be North Korea’s most successful attempt so far at launching a submarine-based ballistic missile, the BBC reported. Such launches are considered particularly tricky because preparation for launch can be hard to detect, according to the BBC.
Kiyoshi Odawara, a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official, told a U.N. Security Council meeting Tuesday on halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction that North Korea’s nuclear test in January and ballistic missile launches – including one on August 3 in which a rocket landed in Japanese waters – pose “clear challenges to the global nonproliferation regime and can not be condoned for any reason”.
North Korea is thought to have first begun land-based ejection tests for the SLBM in 2014.
The United States and South Korea, in their turn, insisted that the exercises are aimed at training defensive skills for combating emerging threat from the North.
Experts said that if the North succeeds in firing off an SLBM, it would make it hard for the THAAD system to intercept a missile launched by North Korea as the missile can be launched underwater anywhere near the South.
South Korea believes the North has a fleet of more than 70 ageing, limited-range submarines – a mix of Chinese, Russian and locally made boats.
North Korea has claimed breakthroughs in its nuclear and missile programs, saying that it has succeeded in developing a nuclear warhead small enough to be put on a missile.
Following the launch, Japan, China and South Korea agreed to urge North Korea to refrain from provocation and follow UN Security Council resolutions.
About 28,500 US troops are based in South Korea to help deter potential aggression from North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. North Korea usually responds to the regular South Korea-U.S. military drills with weapons tests and fiery warlike rhetoric.
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Much of the border, one of the world’s most risky flashpoints, is strewn with land mines and laced with barbed wire.
