Special to WorldTribune.com

Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon

U.S. intelligence agencies believe North Korea is building a submarine capable of launching ballistic missiles, potentially increasing the threat posed by the nuclear-armed rogue state.

A missile launch tube on a North Korean submarine was observed recently by U.S. intelligence agencies and is raising new concerns about the missile and nuclear threat from the communist regime in Pyongyang, according to two defense officials familiar with reports of the development.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeffrey Pool declined to comment on the North Korean missile submarine program. “We do not comment on intelligence matters, but we do urge North Korea to become more transparent in their defense sector in order to reduce tensions in the region,” he said in a statement. …

Military analysts expressed surprise at the intelligence on the missile submarine program and speculated the submarine could be a modification of one of North Korea’s Russian or Chinese design Romeo-class diesel submarines. A second possibility is that the new missile submarine is a copy or modification of a Soviet-era Golf-class missile-firing submarine purchased by Pyongyang — ostensibly for scrap metal — in the mid-1990s.

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