North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has hailed the test launch of a new strategic cruise missile from a submarine as a key moment in building the nation’s naval power, state media said Monday.
Pyongyang has accelerated weapons testing in the new year, including tests of what it called an “underwater nuclear weapon system” and a solid-fuelled hypersonic ballistic missile.
Kim expressed “great satisfaction” over Sunday’s test, state-run news agency KCNA said, “which is of strategic significance in carrying out the plan… for modernizing the army which aims at building a powerful naval force.”
The North Korean leader separately inspected “the building of a nuclear submarine” and discussed issues related to the construction of other new warships, the report added without giving details.
A nuclear-powered submarine has been on a laundry list of strategic weapons set out by Kim at a key party congress in 2021, along with a hypersonic warhead, spy satellites and solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles.
KCNA said Sunday’s “submarine-launched strategic cruise missiles” (SLCM) were in the air for approximately two hours, but did not say how far they flew or whether they had been launched from above or below the water.
Photos carried by state media showed a missile soaring up into the sky from the water leaving a huge trail of white smoke, but it was not clear whether it had been fired from a submarine.
Unlike their ballistic counterparts, the testing of cruise missiles is not banned under current UN sanctions against Pyongyang.
