North Korea has celebrated, with the participation of leader Kim Jong Un, the launching of a new "submarine for tactical nuclear attacks", an asset with which the regime underlines its goal of "further strengthening the nuclear deterrence capacity both in quality as well as quantity," state media reported this Friday.
The ceremony was held on Wednesday at the Pongdae shipyard in Sinpo (northeast coast of the country), the main center for North Korean submersible development, where submarine number 841, named Hero Kim Kun-ok (a laureate naval officer in the forties), was handed over to the Naval Forces.
The launching took place on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the country, which is celebrated this Saturday, and during the ceremony Kim gave a speech in which he stated that the submarine "will be one of the main offensive nuclear assets" and praised the single-party Central Committee's plan to "continuously modernize the naval forces and push for the Navy's adoption of nuclear weapons in the future."
Equipping the navy with atomic weapons "is presented as an urgent matter in these times," said Kim, who on Thursday inspected the interior of the submarine, according to the KCNA news agency.
Based on images published today by North Korean media, the new submersible appears to be the same one that Kim inspected at these shipyards in the summer of 2019.
The submarine, initially named Sinpo-C by analysts, is based on the Sinpo (called "Gorae"/"Ballena" by the North Korean navy), a non-operational model that North Korea first launched in August 2016 a submarine-based ballistic missile (SLBM), the Pukguksong-1.
The "Hero Kim Kun-ok" is in any case a larger vessel, something that responds to its capacity to carry several SLBM missiles (at least four, according to experts), while the Sinpo has the capacity to carry a single projectile.
