North Korea has launched its first “tactical nuclear attack submarine”, according to state media, in advance of tomorrow’s celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of the nation’s founding. Kim Jong-un, its supreme leader, attended the launch ceremony on Wednesday and inspected the submarine, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). However, analysts from South Korea and the UK expressed doubts that the submarine would be capable of firing nuclear missiles.
With its typical hyperbole, the KCNA report claimed: “When the respected Comrade Kim Jong-un arrived at the submarine-launching venue, all the participants broke into enthusiastic cheers as a token of their admiration for the iron-willed brilliant commander and outstanding leader of the people who is paving a broad avenue toward great victory and prosperity with his world-famous matchless pluck and courage, ardent love and trust in the people, and tireless dedication to the building of a prosperous country with powerful army.”
During a speech at the launch, in an apparent response to the US deployment of nuclear submarines in the region, Kim was quoted as saying: “The fact that the nuclear attack submarine, considered a symbol of invasion against our republic for decades, now symbolises our power that terrifies the shameless enemies and that it is a new attack submarine of our own style unseen by the world, is truly something welcomed by all our people.”
Photographs issued by state media of submarine No 841 — named “Hero Kim Kun Ok” after a North Korean naval commander — show what appear to be four large and six small launch tubes for submarine-launched ballistic missiles. But an official from South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said that the tubes were modifications to an existing Romeo-class submarine, a Soviet-era design from the 1950s, and may not actually work.
“An analysis of the external features of the North Korean submarine so far shows that parts of it have been enlarged to carry a missile,” the military in Seoul said. “But it is assessed that the submarine is not in the form of being capable of normal operation.” Joseph Dempsey, a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said: “This is the same — albeit more extensively modified — submarine North Korea showed us way back in July 2019. As a platform it will have some fundamental limitations and vulnerabilities.”
As well as staging a series of provocative missile launches this year, North Korea has also been cultivating ties with Russia and China in response to recently strengthened security cooperation between South Korea, the US and Japan. There have been reports that Kim is set to
meet President Putin in Vladivostoknext week to for talks on a deal to supply Russia with arms, provoking condemnation and threats of reprisals from Washington.
Kim In-ae, spokeswoman for South Korea’s unification ministry, which takes a harder line on Pyongyang than the previous administration, criticised the North for “squandering its scarce resources into its futile weapons development while
disregarding living difficulties of its people”.
The communist regime’s weapons programmes and threats “only puts their security at risk in the face of an overwhelming response from the strengthened South Korea-US-Japan joint posture”, she added.