BEIJING – It is called “Haeil” (tsunami) and its mission is to “silently infiltrate the waters where operations are underway and cause a large-scale radioactive tsunami through an underwater explosion to destroy the main operational ports of the enemy”. Thus North Korean propaganda presented the latest jewel in Kim Jong-un’s arsenal: a “nuclear submarine attack drone”.
The announcement comes at the end of 11 days of joint South Korean-US military exercises, the Freedom Shields, and following the announcement that more “live-fire” exercises by Americans and allies are planned for June. Exercises that the North Korean marshal immediately asks to stop, warning Washington and Seoul that “a nuclear crisis is upon us”.
The new submarine drone, whose development has reportedly begun in 2012, allegedly detonated an underwater warhead against a mock enemy port off Hongwon Bay, after “sailing at an underwater depth of 80-150 meters in the Sea East of Korea for 59 hours and 12 minutes”. State media published photos of a satisfied Kim overseeing operations.
North Korea’s progress is frightening, even though, as South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup explained in Parliament, “the North probably hasn’t yet acquired the technology to arm its most advanced weapons”. Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Seoul’s Ewha University, said Pyongyang’s latest claim of having a nuclear-capable underwater drone “should be met with skepticism. But it is clearly meant to demonstrate that the Kim regime has so so many means of nuclear attack that any preemptive or decapitating strike against it would fail disastrously”.
Launches have intensified in recent days, precisely in response to the exercises of the USA and South Korea. Cruise missiles were tested on Wednesday, last Sunday there was another simulation of a nuclear attack. And ten days ago Pyongyang had declared that for the first time it had tested two “strategic cruise missiles” launched from a submarine against “the military moves of the US imperialists and the traitorous South Korean puppets”.