North Korea has lost a submarine during an exercise off the country’s east coast.
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Subsequently, U.S. spy satellites, aircraft and ships have been secretly watching as the North Korean navy searches for the missing vessel.
The sources could not determine whether the submarine has sunk or was adrift, however they believe it had “suffered some type of failure during an exercise”.
The talks came as Pyongyang has sharply been ramping up nuclear and missile threats as South Korea and the USA have been conducting joint annual military exercises that the North has denounced as a rehearsal for invasion.
North Korea’s statement called the annual amphibious landing drill, known as Ssangyong, the “climax” of its enemies’ new joint wartime operational strategy dubbed Operation Plan (OPLAN) 5015, which reportedly includes a contingency for preemptive strikes against the North’s leadership and its key facilities. On Saturday, 300,000 South Korean troops, 17,000 American soldiers and small detachment forces from New Zealand and Australia began an eight-week series of military drills exercises.
North Korea does not operate large ballistic missile submarines, such as the U.S. Navy’s Ohio-class fleet. On Friday, KCNA reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had ordered more tests to improve his country’s nuclear attack capability.
The U.S. Defense Department said this week it had seen no evidence North Korea had succeeded in miniaturizing a warhead.
The North denied South Korea’s previous accusation that it conducted cyber attacks against the South’s nuclear operator. The nation recently demonstrated its capability to launch a ballistic missile from a submarine.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the successful underwater test fire of a ballistic missile, North Korean state news agency, KCNA, said Saturday.
“The South is claiming the North’s cyber attack and using it for its own political objective”, an opinion piece in the Rodong Sinmun, the official daily newspaper of the North’s ruling party, said on Sunday. Tensions have risen sharply on the Korean peninsula after the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and fired a long-range rocket last month leading to the U.N. Security Council to adopt a new sanctions resolution.
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BBC Korea correspondent Stephen Evans says North Korea has two submarine bases on the eastern coast, facing Japan, and the submarine was thought to have been operating near these bases.
