The navies of South Korea and the US have been running a combined maritime operations center since early this year to better counter North Korea's missile threats, officials said Sunday.

In January, South Korea's Navy and US Naval Forces Korea launched the operations center in the South Korean Navy's operational base in the country's largest port city of Busan, the South's navy officials said.

The move is aimed at strengthening information sharing on North Korea's maritime threats and beefing up cooperation on Washington's speedy dispatch of strategic assets to the region in case of an emergency situation.

North Korea's nuclear and missile programs are on the advance, posing a threat to regional security. Pyongyang's development of submarine-launched ballistic missiles is also a cause for concern as it is hard to detect such missiles.

Tensions heightened on the divided peninsula as North Korea on Sunday fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile which it claims can carry a heavy nuclear warhead.

"We expect that more information on North Korea's SLBMs and other ballistic missiles will be shared through the combined operations center," said a South Korean Navy official.

In February last year, the CNFK relocated their headquarters from Seoul to Busan, a move aimed at enhancing the allies' combined maritime readiness. It was part of United States Forces Korea's broader relocation plan.

The allies' navy forces said they plan to conduct more exercises aimed at detecting and tracking North Korea's SLBMs and ballistic missiles this year. (Yonhap)