N Korea test-fires missile from submarine

North Korea said Saturday that it had successfully test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine.

Although American officials had suspected North Korea was developing such a missile system, the country had not previously claimed to have conducted a test launching. The test, if confirmed, would pose a new challenge to the United States and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, which have been trying to build missile defense capabilities to guard against potential North Korean missile attacks. Submarine-launched missiles are harder to detect and intercept.

"There took place an underwater test-fire of Korean-style powerful strategic submarine ballistic missile," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday. "The test-fire proved and confirmed that the ballistic missile fired from the submarine fully met the requirements of the latest military science and technology."

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had ordered the development of the new missile system, and he inspected the test, the news agency said. It did not say where and when the test took place.

But in another report, the North Korean news agency gave a possible hint of where the launch might have occurred. It reported Saturday that Kim had visited a fisheries complex in Sinpo, a port on the east coast of North Korea, where American and South Korean analysts have said the North was developing a system for submarine-launched missiles.

Last June, North Korea released photos of Kim looking into a periscope inside a submarine. South Korean officials said they believed that the visit took place in a submarine base on an island off Sinpo. During the visit, Kim ordered the modernisation of his country's submarine fleet, and he told submarine crews to prepare to fight in waters far away from their homeland, North Korean state news media said at the time.

Kim called the test "an eye-opening success as signal as satellite launch," comparing it to the North's successful launching of a long-range rocket to put a satellite into orbit in December 2012. American officials believe that the satellite launching was part of North Korea's efforts to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets as far away as the United States mainland.

The Saturday edition of the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party, carried photos of Kim watching a white missile blast out of the water and soar into the sky.

In a separate Korean-language version of its article, the Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying that once his country entered a "systematised production" of new submarine missiles and deployed them "in the near future," it would "make our enemies lose sleep because they are like time bombs that can go off any time on their back."

There was no immediate reaction from the South Korean Defense Ministry.

The news of a successful test-fire was most likely a surprise to South Korean military officials, who have privately told reporters that they believed it would take years for the North to develop such a submarine-launched ballistic missile. But warnings have increased in recent months as analysts detected what appeared to be the land-based tests of a submarine ejector launcher using vertical launch tubes, all conducted in Sinpo.

After the reported missile test, the US has asked North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in region. A submarine-launched ballistic missile adds to the range, secrecy and flexibility with which North Korea could threaten the United States, South Korea and Japan.

"North Korea's development of a submarine-launched missile capability would eventually expand Pyongyang's threat to South Korea, Japan and US bases in East Asia, also complicating regional missile defense planning, deployment and operations," Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., an expert on the North Korean military, said in an article posted on the website 38North in January.

@2015 The New York Times