North Korea launched two “strategic cruise missiles” from a submarine, state-run media announced Monday, hours before South Korea and the United States kicked off their largest joint military drills in five years.
The nuclear-armed North said the “underwater launching drill” had “confirmed the reliability” of the weapons, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a report, calling the submarine-launched missiles part of its “nuclear deterrent.”
It said the two strategic cruise missiles “precisely hit” preset targets in the Sea of Japan after traveling for 1,500 kilometers along figure eight-shaped flight paths for more than two hours.
Such a distance would put virtually all of Japan — including key U.S. military bases — within striking distance.
The North often uses the word “strategic” to refer to weapons that are nuclear capable. The firing of cruise missiles from a submarine was believed to be a first for the country, and adds yet another dimension to its ability to deliver nuclear bombs to South Korea and Japan.
Last month, North Korea said it had launched four Hwasal-2 strategic cruise missiles that “clearly demonstrated ... the war posture of the DPRK nuclear combat force bolstering up in every way its deadly nuclear counterattack capability.”
Experts say cruise missiles present a unique danger in that they can fly low and maneuver, making them potentially very difficult to intercept by air and missile defenses.
Unlike ballistic weapons, cruise missiles are not banned under United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang.
Ahead of the North Korean announcement, the South Korean military said Monday that it had detected an unspecified missile launched from a submarine in waters off the North's eastern coastal city of Sinpo on Sunday morning, the Yonhap news agency reported.
Later in the day, a South Korean military official characterized the launch as an "early-stage" test, telling Yonhap that there was a "difference" between the North's claim about the missile's specifics and the analysis made by Seoul and Washington, a hint that the military believes the results may have been exaggerated and that the missile has not yet been deployed yet.
The launch came hours before South Korea and the United States kicked off the Freedom Shield joint military exercises on Monday. The exercises are scheduled to run through March 23.
Pyongyang views joint drills between the two allies as a rehearsal for invasion, but Seoul and Washington call them defensive in nature.
In Tokyo on Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, the government’s top spokesman, said that there was no information that the missiles had flown near Japanese waters, but added that, if true, the North’s announcement that the weapons had flown some 1,500 km would “pose a threat to peace and stability in the region.”
Asked about the joint drills, Matsuno called U.S. military deterrence “indispensable for regional peace and stability.”
In a separate statement carried by KCNA, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry criticized the drills and slammed the United States over plans to hold an informal meeting later this week on North Korea’s human rights record.
North Korea’s people are ready "‘to mercilessly punish the U.S. imperialists totally denying the sovereignty of our state and its socialist system and thus make them pay dearly without fail,” the statement said.
Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a military drill that fired off “a powerful volley” of six missiles simulating a strike on enemy airports. Kim has ordered his forces to intensify “various simulated drills for real war in a diverse way in different situations.”
Sunday’s submarine-launched missile exercises were the latest signal that the North has moved from testing its powerful weapons to conducting drills that demonstrate the country could take “actual action rather than words.”
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said that while the submarine-launched cruise missiles represent a threat that the United States and its allies must take seriously, “Pyongyang is likely exaggerating when it claims it has already armed such missiles with nuclear warheads.”
“The Kim regime wants to show it can match or surpass military capabilities on display during U.S.-South Korea defense exercises,” he said. “Yet the reality is North Korean soldiers are poorly fed and are being ordered to help farmers address the country’s food shortage.”
Concerns over North Korea’s chronic food shortages have grown in recent months, with officials in Seoul announcing recently that deaths from starvation are believed to be occurring in some parts of the country.
The latest launches come ahead of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s inaugural trip to Tokyo for a meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida from Thursday and his state visit to Washington for talks with U.S. President Joe Biden on April 26.
Tensions over the North’s nuclear and missile programs soared in 2022 as it fired off a record number of weapons in the face of calls by the U.S. and its allies to return to denuclearization talks.
Experts say this year could prove to be even more perilous, with signs already emerging that Kim remains determined to follow through on a New Year’s pledge of an “exponential” increase in the number of nuclear bombs his country possesses — a vow that has left little room for any possible return to denuclearization talks.
Kim also appears ready to conduct his first nuclear test since 2017 as he seeks to miniaturize warheads for tactical weapons, or those intended for use on the battlefield, to strike South Korea and Japan, which host the bulk of U.S. troops in Asia.
The North could also test-fire a new solid-fueled long-range missile that it unveiled at a military parade last month.
The bulk of North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal consists of weapons that use liquid fuel, which requires them to be fueled up at launch sites — a time-consuming process that leaves them open to pre-emptive strikes. Solid-fueled ICBMs, however, would not need to be fueled up, making them easier to deploy quickly and more difficult to spot and shoot down.
Matsuno said Tokyo believed it is possible that North Korea will continue to “engage in further provocations, including conducting a nuclear test.”
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