Seoul responds to Pyongyang, tests submarine ballistic missile

Seoul, Sep 15 (EFE).- South Korea launched a submarine ballistic missile, a test carried out in apparent response to the ballistic missile test carried out by Pyongyang just hours before.

According to South Korea’s presidential office President Moon Jae-in was at the test site at the Defense Development Agency headquarters, in the coastal county of Taean in the Yellow Sea (called the West Sea in both Koreas).

The test was successfully conducted from a Dosan Ahn Chang-ho-class submarine, the latest model submersible for the South Korean Navy.

The presidential office was limited to saying in a statement that the projectile flew the expected distance and hit the marked target “with precision.”

This is not Seoul’s first successful test of a submarine missile, as military sources leaked to the media that a first successful test took place two weeks ago.

This makes South Korea the eighth country with the capacity to launch these missiles, a list that also includes the United States, Russia, China, India, the United Kingdom, France and North Korea.

This expands South Korea’s ballistic arsenal range, as the mobile nature of the submarines makes launches difficult to detect.

“Owning a [submarine missile] is very significant in ensuring deterrence against omni-directional threats and is expected to play an important role in our self-sufficient capacity for national defense and in establishing peace on the Korean peninsula,” the presidential office said in the statement.

The test comes hours after Pyongyang fired two ballistic missiles that flew 800 kilometers before landing in the Sea of ??Japan (called East Sea in both Koreas) and seems a clear response by Seoul to what it considers a new show of hostility on the part of the Kim Jong-un regime.

It is unusual for Seoul to respond to Pyongyang’s tests on the same day with a weapons test.

This exchange comes at a time when the denuclearization dialogue has remained stalled since the failed 2019 Hanoi summit.

The US has insisted in recent months it will meet Pyongyang without preconditions at any time and place to try to reignite the talks, but has so far had no response from Pyongyang. EFE

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