[The successful test-firing of the new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) “comes to be of great significance as it ushered in a new phase in containing the outside forces’ threat to the DPRK and further bolstering its military muscle for self-defense,” KCNA said, using the initials of the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.]
By Simon Denyer
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In
this photo provided by the North Korean government, a missile takes off near
the
eastern
coastal town of Wonsan on Wednesday. (Korean Central News Agency/AP)
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TOKYO — North Korea announced Thursday it had
successfully tested a new type of ballistic missile the previous day that is
designed to be fired from a submarine, in a violation of U.N. Security Council
resolutions just ahead of a resumption of negotiations with the United States
over its nuclear weapons program.
The state-run Korean Central News Agency
(KCNA) said the missile was launched from the waters off Wonsan Bay on North
Korea’s east coast, a development that underlined the country’s continued
progress in missile development and its ever-growing military threat.
The successful test-firing of the new type of
submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) “comes to be of great significance
as it ushered in a new phase in containing the outside forces’ threat to the
DPRK and further bolstering its military muscle for self-defense,” KCNA said,
using the initials of the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea.
The U.S. State Department called on North
Korea to “refrain from provocations and abide by its obligations under U.N.
Security Council Resolutions.”
It also encouraged Pyongyang to “remain
engaged in substantive and sustained negotiations to do their part to ensure
peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and achieve denuclearization.”
A spokesman for U.N. Secretary General
António Guterres called the test “very concerning” and urged Washington and
Pyongyang to make progress toward denuclearization in their talks.
“The launch of a ballistic missile is yet
another violation of Security Council resolutions,” spokesman Stéphane Dujarric
said at a regular news conference in New York.
A day earlier, North Korea announced that
negotiations with the United States would formally begin Saturday, marking the
first official talks since President Trump met Kim Jong Un in June.
South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it
“placed weight on the possibility” that the missile was launched from a
submarine. But a U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity
to describe an assessment not yet made public, said the missile appeared to
have been fired from a barge that North Korean forces had towed out to sea.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the
missile flew 280 miles and reached an altitude of about 570 miles. Japan said
the missile may have split in two, with one part landing in the waters of its
exclusive economic zone, around 220 miles north of its Oki Islands. Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe condemned and protested the test.
KCNA said the missile had been launched
vertically and claimed it “had no adverse impact on the security of neighboring
countries.”
David Wright, co-director of the global
security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, also noted that the
missile was fired with a lofted trajectory.
“If flown on a standard trajectory with the
same payload, that missile would have a maximum range of about 1,900 km (1,200
miles),” he wrote in a blog post. “This would classify the missile as medium
range (1,000 to 3,500 km).”
The missile test was a reminder of North
Korea’s military capabilities and an indication that it intends to drive a hard
bargain in the talks, experts said. The launch can also be seen as an implicit
threat — that if Pyongyang does not get what it wants in the negotiations, it
could ratchet up tensions.
KCNA said the missile was the third model in
the Pukkuksong (or Pukguksong) family.
The Pukkuksong-1 is currently North Korea’s
only SLBM, while the second model in the line is a land-based missile using a
similar design.
Ankit Panda, a nuclear expert at the
Federation of American Scientists, said the Pukkuksong-3 had been under
development for a while. In July, Kim was seen inspecting a new submarine
thought to be capable of firing ballistic missiles.
Firing such a missile would show that “Kim Jong
Un is making progress on developing the sea leg of his nuclear forces,” Panda
said. “It’s clear the sea leg isn’t just a vanity project or a prestige
project, but they see it as something worth spending resources on, to improve
their deterrence in a crisis.”
Lee Ho-ryung, a researcher at the Korea
Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul, said North Korea has been developing
its submarine capacity for a while, so such a launch would not be a surprise.
A “submarine-launched ballistic missile poses
a bigger threat than other short-range missiles North Korea displayed over the
past year,” she said. “By displaying this a day after announcing plans for
working-level talks, North Korea is implying that its weapons capacity will
continue to be improved while negotiations are stalled.”
Panda said the timing of the launch was
probably intended to increase North Korea’s bargaining power in the talks, as
well as to protest South Korea’s display this week of new F-35 stealth fighters
obtained from the United States and Japan’s plans to deploy the Aegis Ashore
missile defense system.
Negotiations between U.S. and North Korean
diplomats have been frozen since the breakdown of a summit between Trump and
Kim in Hanoi in February. Another meeting between the two leaders at the
demilitarized zone between the two Koreas in June was supposed to lead to a
resumption of negotiations, but the stalemate has persisted until now.
Meanwhile, North Korea has conducted
short-range ballistic missile tests, while complaining bitterly about joint
military exercises carried out by the United States and South Korea.
Min Joo Kim in Seoul, Akiko Kashiwagi in
Tokyo and Missy Ryan in Washington contributed to this report.
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