SEOUL – A North Korean ballistic missile fired from a submarine on Saturday likely failed in the early stage of flight, the South’s military said.

The missile was likely fired from the submarine as planned but appears to have failed in the early stage of flight, the South’s office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The missile launch into waters east of the Korean peninsula comes days after new U.S. sanctions targeting the isolated country’s leader for human rights abuses.

Inside a North Korean submarine

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Reuters

The Y-20, China’s domestically developed heavy-lift transport plane, officially joined the People’s Liberation Army Air Force on Wednesday.

Xu Qiliang, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, and General Ma Xiaotian, the Air Force’s commander, attended a ceremony in Sichuan province marking the occasion, an Air Force statement announced.

The first user of the colossal jet is an Air Force unit in the PLA’s Western Theater Command, according to the statement. It has a maximum takeoff weight of 220 metric tons and is able to transport cargo and personnel over long distances in diverse weather conditions.

“Taking the Y-20 into service marks a crucial step in the Air Force’s effort to improve our ability to project strategic power,” said Senior Colonel Shen Jinke, spokesman for the Air Force.

The development of the Y-20 started in 2007 at Aviation Industry Corp of China. The aircraft made its maiden flight in January 2013, and it flew at the 10th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in November 2014.

Tang Changhong, the Y-20’s chief designer, said the jet has good maneuverability, an outstanding aerodynamic design, a high level of automation and a strong payload capacity.

The Y-20 will hugely improve China’s ability to safeguard its overseas interests and protect Chinese living abroad, said Fu Qianshao, a PLA Air Force expert on aircraft.

“The long operational range and strong payload capacity make the Y-20 an ideal aircraft for strategic projection and overseas evacuation,” he said. “To safeguard our overseas interests, we need a powerful transport aircraft like the Y-20 that can operate from any terrain and rapidly deploy or evacuate our people.”

Fu predicted that the supersize jet will be developed into a large family of early warning and aerial refueling aircraft.

He added that it will not take long for PLA air crews to familiarize themselves with the new jet because they have had experience with transport planes and the aircraft’s good automation capability will reduce the crews’ work.

Wang Ya’nan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said the biggest advantage of the Y-20 is that it was “tailor-made” to meet the PLA’s requirements.

Responding to AVIC officials’ earlier statement that China will develop new transport planes larger than the Y-20, Wang said larger aircraft – like Russia’s Antonov An-124 Ruslan and the United States’ Lockheed C-5 Galaxy – are useful to ferry enormous pieces of equipment, but the Y-20 will remain the backbone of the China’s military transport aircraft.

“The plane can fly more than 5,000 km in eight hours, so it can fulfil most of the PLA’s transport needs,” he said.

China could consider quitting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea if the upcoming ruling by an arbitration court in The Hague infringes on China’s sovereignty, an expert said.

The Arbitral Tribunal’s ruling in the arbitration case, which was unilaterally initiated by the Philippines against China over the South China Sea disputes, will be announced on Tuesday.

He Zhou, a professor at the Center for Communication Research at City University of Hong Kong, told China Daily on Friday that the UNCLOS is likely to be manipulated by some countries using it as tool to harm China’s sovereignty and national interests.

China has been a strong supporter of the UNCLOS for many years. However, the convention’s provisions may be exploited by other states for political reasons, He said.

The convention, signed in 1982, came into force in 1994. Currently, 167 countries and the European Union have joined the convention. The United States has not ratified it.

The UNCLOS does not exclude historic rights that predate it and are continuously claimed. The issue of territorial sovereignty is not subject to the convention.

China holds that the case brought by Manila is essentially about sovereignty and maritime delimitation, and thus the court does not have jurisdiction.

It would be conceivable for China to quit the UNCLOS if its territorial sovereignty was undermined by the Arbitral Tribunal, He said.

According to an online survey by the website of Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV in March, 92.8 per cent of the 19,950 participants voted in favour of China quitting the UNCLOS.

Myron Nordquist, associate director and editor at the Center for Oceans Law and Policy at the University of Virginia School of Law, told China Daily that “the arbitration has set a bad precedent with its award on jurisdiction”.

“There is noway to guarantee the effectiveness” of Article 298 of the UNCLOS, which excludes compulsory arbitration on issues including maritime boundary, he said.

In 2006, China declared it would exercise its rights under Article 298.

Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said that China is not likely to leave the UNCLOS. However, it has reasons to refuse to implement the arbitral ruling, Wu said.