North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un led the presentation of the imposing submarine with great fanfare. The president alleged that it is “one of the main offensive nuclear assets” of the country. However, experts predicted that it would not be ready for operational service and is only one step forward in modernizing its antiquated fleet of submersibles.
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This Friday, September 8, the North Korean state media echoed the presentation of the first “submarine for tactical nuclear attacks”, which took place last Wednesday, with the presence of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un.
The president defined it as “one of the main nuclear offensive assets” of the country, which will allow “further strengthening the nuclear deterrence capacity both in quality and quantity,” according to statements collected by the official KCNA news agency.
At the ceremony held at the Pongdae shipyards in Sinpo (the main submersible development center on the country’s northeast coast), Kim handed over to the Naval Forces this submarine number 841, named ‘Hero Kim Kun Ok’, in honor of a renowned 1940s North Korean Navy officer.
According to KCNA, Kim inspected the interior of the submarine on Thursday and called it “urgent” to equip the navy with atomic weapons, while praising the plan of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (the country’s only formation). to “continually modernize naval forces and encourage the Navy’s adoption of nuclear weaponry in the future.”
With the available images of the event (held within the framework of the events for the 75th anniversary of the founding of North Korea), several analysts began to decipher the characteristics of the ship, which would be the same one that Kim Jong-un visited in December of 2019, while it was under construction. It appears to be a modified Romeo-class submarine, a Soviet design that Pyongyang bought from China in the 1970s and then began producing domestically.
According to estimates, the submersible would be about 84 meters long, weigh about 3,000 tons when submerged – making it the largest and heaviest in the North Korean fleet – and could have a crew of between 50 and 60 men.
In addition, it appears to have at least 10 launch tubes, possibly designed to house ballistic and cruise missiles.
Advance or exaggeration? Doubts about the new North Korean submarine
In a statement, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed that it had “closely” followed the development of the new North Korean submarine and raised doubts about its actual capability.
“As a result of the analysis of the external appearance of the North Korean submarine, it appears that the wingspan of external elements, such as the bridge, has been increased to carry missiles. However, we do not believe that it is capable of carrying out normal operations. and there are signs that he seeks to exaggerate or confuse,” they remarked.
This statement follows the line of other recent ones from Seoul, which seeks to minimize the impact of North Korean developments, which has also raised questions about these analyses.
On the one hand, the new development is surprising because it is an impoverished country like North Korea, which is part of the seven states in the world that can fire missiles from submarines, and takes a step forward in its goal of modernizing its submersibles.
However, despite having one of the largest fleets in the world (with around 80 ships), it is mainly made up of old models, which are not considered attack.
Vann Van Diepen, a US government weapons expert, said the old submarines used as the core of the new design are relatively noisy, slow and limited in range, which would make them “quite vulnerable” in a war.
But Shin Seung-ki, a researcher at the Korean Institute for Defense Analysis (KIDA), asserted that “it is clear that North Korea has significantly expanded and strengthened the operational capabilities of its naval forces.”
This submarine will have inherent limitations
For his part, Ankit Panda, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted that “this submarine, although highly modified, is based on technology of Soviet origin from the 1950s and will have inherent limitations.” Still, he said that ” In terms of complicating the targeting challenges that the United States and its allies will face, the submarine will serve North Korea’s purposes.”
Either way, Pyongyang’s plan is to convert other existing submarines into nuclear-armed ships and eventually build nuclear-powered submersibles, Kim revealed.
With Reuters, AP and EFE
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