North Korea fires off submarine missile

SEOUL: North Korea made a key step in its nuclear weapons programme by test-launching a ballistic missile from a submarine, but remains years away from developing a missile system or submarine that could threaten its sworn enemy, the US, experts say.

South Korea yesterday called the test “very serious and concerning” and urged Pyongyang to immediately stop developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which it said hindered regional security.

Isolated North Korea, already slapped with UN sanctions for its missile and nuclear tests, is widely believed to be trying to develop a nuclear device small enough to be mounted on a ballistic missile, but it is not clear whether it has done so – a crucial step to make its nuclear missile threat credible.

And while some North Korean submarines are technically capable of coming within range of the US mainland, they cannot necessarily carry a missile, although the North’s missile-equipped submarines could reach Japanese waters.

“They need to build a new, bigger submarine,” said Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum and a policy adviser to the South Korean navy.

North Korea is technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and regularly threatens the US, the South’s biggest ally, with destruction.

Both the US and Japan reserve the right to conduct preemptive strikes on North Korean missile sites if a nuclear attack is viewed as imminent.

Launching missiles from submarines could enable Pyongyang to hide them. – Reuters WASHINGTON: Sonya Baumstein lay in bed one sleepless night and wept softly as she pondered her upcoming attempt to cross the Pacific Ocean alone in a rowboat.

“I was just thinking about the fact that I’m going to be leaving everything that I love for a really long time,” Baumstein said of her planned 9 600km odyssey. “And I don’t know the consequences.”

The 30-year-old from Port Townsend, Washington, has undertaken endurance feats in the past, but her journey from Japan to San Francisco, expected to start next Monday, is her most daunting adventure yet.

The four- to six-month trip is an endeavour no woman has accomplished solo.

Despite 16 attempts to row solo across the Pacific, only two men have successfully completed the journey – Frenchmen Gerard d’Aboville in 1991 and Emmanuel Coindre in 2005, according to Ocean Rowing Society records.

“Once she leaves Japan, the next person she’ll see will be in San Francisco,” said Andrew Cull, the journey’s operation manager.

Baumstein will take off on her custom-made 7m, 350kg boat with 544kg of freeze-dried food, 180 high-carbohydrate drink supplements and a cache of olive oil that she will consume in the hope of retaining as much weight as possible.

The carbon and kevlar boat weighs in at a light 350kg and has on board an electric water maker that desalinates seawater for drinking.

Baumstein, who was recruited as a rower by the University of Wisconsin-Madison before a car accident derailed her collegiate athletic career, expects to burn to up 10 000 calories a day and has gained 18kg for the trip. Her bathroom on board will be a bucket.

She has a team that will aid her from land via satellite phone, and she will be tracked by GPS, but there will be no support vessel. – Reuters