S Korea says North’s submarine missile threatens stability

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye warned on Tuesday that North Korea’s recent submarine-launched ballistic missile test posed a “serious <g data-gr-id="15">challenge” to</g> regional stability and vowed a strong military response to any provocation from Pyongyang.

Pyongyang’s state media announced Saturday that a new SLBM had been successfully tested under the personal supervision of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, who described it as a “world-level strategic weapon”.

The test rang alarm bells in Seoul because a fully developed SLBM capability would take the North Korean nuclear threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean peninsula and the potential to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.

Pyongyang’s development of an SLBM “is a serious challenge to stability on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia,” Park told a specially-convened meeting of senior ministers and security advisers.

South Korean troops will retaliate “sternly” in the event of any provocation by North Korea, especially near the disputed Yellow Sea border, a statement from the presidential Blue House quoted her as saying. The North Korean test was widely believed to have been an ejection test -- with the missile only travelling a few hundred metres -- rather than a full flight test, and S Korea’s initial assessment was that North was still in “early phase” of development.