North Korea said Saturday that it had successfully test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile from under the sea, which would mark a major advance in its military capabilities.
Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, ordered the test of the “world-level strategic weapon” and was present when it “soared into the sky from underwater,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported. The Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the Korean Workers’ Party, separately ran on a boat holding binoculars as the rocket blasted out of the sea.
North Korea had previously tested the KN-11 missile from platforms on land and at sea, but this appears to be the first time it has launched a rocket from under water.
News of the launch came on the same day that Kim had been expected to make his first foreign appearance, at Russia’s World War II Victory Day celebrations in Moscow.
But the Kremlin last week said Kim because he had to take care of “internal matters.” Saturday’s photos show Kim instead flexing his military muscle at home, declaring the test an “eyeopening success.”
The North Korean reports did not say when or where the test took place, or how far the missile flew. There was no independent confirmation of the reports.
But the test “proved and confirmed that the ballistic missile fire from the submarine fully met the requirements of the latest military science and technology,” KCNA said, according to a translation by .
South Korea and the United States have been concerned that North Korea was developing a ballistic missile that could be launched underwater. They are also concerned that North Korea might be making progress on miniaturizing a nuclear weapon so that it could be attached to a missile, although there has been no evidence that it has mastered this difficult step.
Pyongyang said this year that it had tested a missile launcher from the shore in , on North Korea’s east coast.
Naval-Technology.com, a defense analysis Web site, this week that North Korea had conducted a test from an underwater test platform near Sinpo, quoting U.S. defense officials as saying that the development was part of North Korea’s efforts to expand the country’s nuclear-weapons capacity.
“The submarine can get the platform to launch the missile within range of the continental United States, Alaska, or Hawaii,” it quoted Bruce Bechtol, a former Defence Intelligence Agency official, as saying. “Thus, once operational, this immediately brings key nodes in the United States within range of what would likely be a nuclear armed missile.”
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