Defense officials in South Korea say North Korea may be trying to develop the ability to fire missiles from submarines, the Wall Street Journal reports.
While South Korea doesn’t believe Pyongyang currently has submarines capable of launching missiles, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a recent statement to a lawmaker that it is "analyzing some signs that indicate the possibility of a North Korean submarine equipped with a missile."
The JCS declined to provide further details but the statement comes after a recent news report from the Washington Free Beacon that said U.S. intelligence agencies had spotted a missile launch tube on a North Korean submarine.
The Pentagon declined to comment on that report, which said the submarine could be a modification of North Korea’s Romeo-class submarines, or a copy of a Soviet-era Golf-class decommissioned submarine purchased by Pyongyang ostensibly for scrap metal in the mid-1990s.
South Korea’s defense ministry and the JCS say North Korea has about 70 submarines in total—all 1,800-ton Romeo-class or smaller—for combat use. In order to carry and launch ballistic missiles, the submarines would have to be at least as big as the 3,000-ton Golf-class, the officials say.