Washington and Seoul have yet to officially comment on Thursday’s test.
On Friday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol accused North Korea of “reckless provocations.”
Analyst Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that footage of the launch on state TV was the world’s first glimpse of the missiles.
The weapon could be similar to Russia’s Poseidon underwater drone, but questions remain, he said on Twitter.
North Korea has been preparing the underwater drone since 2012 — the politburo of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea was first told about it in October 2021, according to KCNA.
The country has dozens of nuclear warheads, but it’s unclear whether it has mastered the technology to fit them onto the new weapons it claims to have developed.
Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, told reporters at a briefing Wednesday that the U.S. would stay vigilant but that Kim did not appear poised to carry out a nuclear test.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
