North Korea is about to join a dangerous club after unveiling first nuclear submarine

North Korea may soon seal its place in an exclusive global club after Kim Jong Un unveiled the country’s first nuclear-powered submarine under construction.

‘These incomparably revolutionary vessels must fulfill their mission as a nuclear power’s formidable deterrent that will overpower the hostile forces’ entrenched “gunboat diplomacy”‘, the North Korean dictator said.

He appeared as barely a spec walking alongside the vast vessel in pictures released by North Korea’s government news agency on Saturday.

The location of the shipyard where the 7,000-ton submarine, capable of carrying an estimated 10 missiles, is being built has not been disclosed.

‘It would be absolutely threatening to [South Korea] and the US’, which started a joint military training exercise this week, Moon Keun-sik, a South Korean submarine expert who teaches at Seoul’s Hanyang University, said.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, said: ‘This announcement of the construction of a nuclear submarine reveals an intention to threaten the deployment of US aircraft carriers.’

Only six countries possess nuclear submarines – the USA, Russia, the UK, France, China and India.

Powering heavily-armed vessels under water for long periods of time, they allow countries to project power over vast distances.

It’s not just the missiles on board that make them a threat – the fact that need to surface less means you’re not always entirely sure where your enemy’s submarines are.

That appeals to Mr Kim, who said: ‘[North Korea’s] maritime defense power will be thoroughly exercised, without any restricted waters, to any waters deemed necessary.’

North Korea might already have one of the world’s largest submarine fleets – it has up to 90 of them – but they have so far all been diesel-powered.

That’s not good enough for dictator Kim Jong Un, who included possessing ‘underwater-launched nuclear strategic weapons, which are of great significance in enhancing long-range nuclear strike capabilities’ in a a five-year plan announced in 2021.

Among the other weapons he listed were intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), hypersonic weapons, spy satellites and multi-warhead missiles.

Weapons testing has soared since then.

Last October, Mr Kim celebrated the country’s longest ballistic missile test after a Hwasong-19 ICBM flew 622 miles before landing in the sea off the Korean peninsula.

Now it seems North Korea is on the bring of completing a nuclear submarine, capable of firing nuclear missiles.

The country already has an estimated 50 nuclear warheads, with the material to assemble 90 more, according to the Arms Control Association.

Some can reach targets more than 9,000 miles away, the US-based CSIS Missile Defense Project estimates.

Recent developments have caused alarm for South Korea, which Kim Jong Un ‘no longer sees… as a state’, North Korea expert Dr Edward Howell previously told Metro.

Last January, Mr Kim declared South Korea his country’s ‘invariable principal enemy’ abandoning his father and grandfather’s longheld ambition of peacefully reuniting North and South.

Tensions have been rising ever since. North Korea has blown up roads once linking it to the South. It has erected anti-tank barriers, and sent balloons armed with rubbish and feces over the border.

Mr Kim claims he is defending North Korea against US-led aggression.

South Korea responded by dropping propaganda leaflets from drones, and broadcasting messages from loudspeakers across the Demilitarised Zone.

Responding to news of the nuclear submarine, US National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said: ‘The US is committed to the complete denuclearisation of North Korea.’

But North Korea isn’t interested, it seems.

Dr Howell, a politics lecturer at Oxford University said: ‘North Korea is at the stage where it’s not even pretending to want to talk with the West, with South Korea or the US.

‘North Korea’s main goal is to gain recognition internationally as a de facto nuclear state, so it’s not interested in negotiations.’

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