South Korea's military says North Korea has fired at least one unidentified ballistic missile toward its eastern sea.
On Wednesday, 38North, a North Korea-focused website, said its analysis of commercial satellite imagery shows multiple barges and other vessels gathered at the eastern port of Sinpo, where North Korea has a major shipyard building submarines. The report said the North was possibly preparing to launch a new submarine capable of firing ballistic missiles.
North Korea has been pushing hard to acquire an ability to fire nuclear-armed missiles from submarines, which it sees as a key piece in building a nuclear arsenal that can viably threaten its neighbors and eventually the American homeland. Such weapons in theory would bolster North Korea’s deterrent by ensuring retaliation after absorbing a nuclear attack on land. Ballistic missile submarines would also add a new maritime threat to the North’s growing collection of solid-fuel weapons fired from land vehicles, which are being developed with an apparent aim to overwhelm missile defense systems in South Korea and Japan.
South Korea’s military in March detected the North flight-testing a ballistic missile from a submarine in March that flew 600 kilometers before landing in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. The March launch was North Korea’s first testing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile system since October of last year, when it fired a new short-range missile from the 8.24 Yongung – its only known submarine capable of launching a missile. The October underwater launch was the North’s first in two years.
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