North Korea Fires A Submarine-Launched Missile

World News Rudolph Rodriquez
http://i2.wp.com/stocknewsusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/1461611265-2016-04-24-01-05.jpg?fit=560%2C400

North Korea reportedly launched a submarine missile that flew 500 km towards Japan on Wednesday. This has been seen as a show of the enhancing technological capabilities for an isolated country that has carried out several launches in opposition to UN sanctions.

With the ability to launch missiles from submarines, North Korea will be able to evade the new anti-missile system for South Korea and remain a threat even if their nuclear-armed and land-based arsenals are destroyed.

The missile was fired at 5:30 a.m. from somewhere close to the city of Sinpo, the location of a submarine base. This was the first time one of North Korean launches reached Japan’s ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) an area of control designed by countries to aid in maintaining air security.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, the missile was launched at an elevated angle, which means that its full range should be 1,000 km at an ordinary trajectory. This distance indicates that North Korea’s push to make a submarine-launching system is paying off. Jeffrey Lewis with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California said the test appears to be a success.

The submarine missile launch came just two days after major rivals South Korea and the US started annual military exercises in South Korea, a move that the North condemns as preparation for an invasion and has gone on to threaten retaliation.

It also comes at a period of intensified animosity between the rival Koreas following a U.S. plan to install a sophisticated missile defense system in South Korea and the defection of a certain senior North Korean diplomat in London.

On Tuesday, the American led U.N. command in the South accused the North of planting land mines close to a truce village in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two countries.