SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) – South Korean and US forces began their biggest joint exercise in years on Monday. North Korea, meanwhile, said it had launched cruise missiles from its submarine in a clear protest against the drills.
North Korea’s launches on Sunday indicate the country is likely to conduct provocative weapons tests during US-South Korea exercises expected to last 11 days. Jong-un ordered his army to be ready to repel the rival’s “desperate preparations for war.”
North Korea’s growing nuclear threat, combined with concerns about China’s ambitions, is prompting the United States to strengthen its Asian alliances. North Korea has steadily expanded its nuclear arsenal over the past year as China and Russia repeatedly thwarted U.S.-led efforts to tighten sanctions on North Korea, despite a string of banned missile tests. .
The South Korea-US exercises include computer simulations and several compound field training exercises. South Korean officials said the field exercises would return to the scale of the allies’ earlier largest field training that was last held in 2018.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said that the launches of two cruise missiles from a submarine off its east coast showed a resolve to respond with “overwhelming powerful” force to the intensifying military maneuvers by “the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces.”
KCNA called the missiles “strategic” weapons and said their firings verified the posture of the country’s “nuclear war deterrence.” This implies that North Korea intends to arm the cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, though it’s still unknown if it has overcome the last remaining technological barriers to acquire functioning nuclear-tipped missiles.
It said the missiles flew more than two hours, drawing figure-eight-shaped patterns and demonstrating an ability to hit targets 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) away. The missiles were fired from the 8.24 Yongung ship, KCNA said, referencing a submarine that North Korea used to conduct its first submarine-launched ballistic missile test in 2016.
The reported launch details show Japan, including U.S. military bases in Okinawa, is within striking distance of the cruise missiles if they are fired from the North’s eastern waters, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. He added that if North Korean submarines could operate far from the coast of Guam, the weapons could even reach the U.S. Pacific region of Guam.
Sunday’s action marked North Korea’s first underwater missile launch since it test-fired the weapon from a silo beneath an inland reservoir last October. Tested a range ballistic missile.
North Korea’s command of submarine-launched missile systems would make it more difficult for adversaries to detect launches in advance and give North Korea a chance to retaliate. says it will take years, extensive resources and major technology upgrades to build a fleet of multiple submarines that can sail quietly and carry out attacks reliably.
The test was also the first known North Korean launch of a cruise missile from a submarine. His previous underwater launch launches all associated ballistic missiles. It is also the first time North Korea has launched multiple missiles from a submarine in a single launch event, observers say.
“At a time when North Korea reports that efforts to build (large submarines) have made little progress due to sanctions, North Korea is still largely developing the types of missiles that can be launched from submarines. I want to show you,” he said.
