Kim Jong-un Hails Firing of Submarine Missile as ‘Greatest Success’

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/world/asia/north-korea-kim-jong-un-missile-test.html

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SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country’s test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile this week had achieved the “greatest success.”

He claimed that the continental United States, as well as American military bases in the Pacific, were now within the striking range of his missiles, according to the North’s state media on Thursday.

Analysts and defense officials in the region said that North Korea was still years away from achieving the capability Mr. Kim claimed. The country still does not have submarines large and advanced enough to travel long distances without detection to attack distant targets across the Pacific, they said.

Nevertheless, the North’s test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday alarmed leaders of the region, as it demonstrated the advances the secretive country has made in its efforts to significantly enhance the range and stealth of its missiles.

The Pukguksong, or Polaris, missile flew 310 miles toward Japan on Wednesday. When the North first tested it in May last year, the projectile exploded midair shortly after being ejected from under the water.

Mr. Kim, who supervised the launching on Wednesday, “appreciated the test-fire as the greatest success and victory,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Thursday. It quoted Mr. Kim as saying that “the U.S. mainland and the operational theater in the Pacific are now within the striking range of the Korean People’s Army.”

The news agency also said that North Korea launched its missile at a “high angle” from the maximum launching depth, indicating that it could have flown more than 310 miles if it had launched it at a normal angle. South Korean defense officials told reporters that the North appeared to have launched the missile at a sharp angle to keep it from landing too close to Japan.

Mr. Kim claimed that the test on Wednesday showed that his country now had “all substantial means capable of standing up against the U.S. nuclear hegemony.” He urged his engineers to step up efforts to mount nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles and develop the means of their delivery.

During a visit to a front-line military unit on Wednesday, President Park Geun-hye of South Korea said the North’s “irrational decision-making system” and Mr. Kim’s “unpredictable character” made the North’s nuclear and missile threats more dangerous.

Submarine-launched missile technology would extend the reach of North Korean nuclear missiles and improve the country’s “second-strike” capability to retaliate if its land-based launching sites were taken out.

But even if the North has been testing such missiles, it still needs to build a large, stealthy and long-range submarine to deploy them, South Korean defense officials said.

North Korea has an outdated fleet of 70 submarines, most of them minivessels unfit for operations beyond littoral waters, they said. Its largest submarines at the moment are copies of the Soviet-era Romeo class. The South Korean military has been monitoring a North Korean effort to build a modified Sinpo class submarine, which it has also used for its recent missile tests.

Even this new design with diesel engines would not be enough to make a round trip across the Pacific without surfacing and exposing itself for detection, the officials said. But it still could pose a serious threat to South Korea, Japan and American military bases in the region, they said.