A South Korean official says North Korea currently operates 25 missile bases and has the capacity to strike South Korean targets with missiles in three to seven minutes.

Kim Tae-woo, a senior official at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, made the remark in a U.S. seminar hosted by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

He said missiles deployed near the inter-Korean border are capable of reaching Seoul in less than a minute. He therefore called both the outdated Patriot missiles and maritime interceptor missiles Seoul plans to institute "useless."

U.S. Forces in South Korea currently utilize the old Patriot PAC-2 and the new Patriot PAC-3 missiles, but they are meant to protect U.S. military bases.