When he met with top military officials to review the nation’s war preparations in the face of his competitors’ “frantic” military drills, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un promised to increase his nuclear weapons in more “practical and aggressive” methods, state media said Tuesday.
The Central Military Committee of the governing Workers’ Party met on Monday under heightened tensions as the tempo of both the US-South Korean joint military exercises and the North Korean weapons displays have accelerated recently in a cycle of tit-for-tat.
The members of the committee reportedly spoke on improving war preparations and bolstering defensive capabilities to offset the danger presented by the partners’ manoeuvres, which the North characterises as invasion rehearsals, according to the official Korean Central News Agency of North Korea.
Kim emphasised the need to strengthen his nuclear deterrence with “growing speed on a more practical and aggressive” way as he went through the nation’s frontline strike preparations and different war papers, according to KCNA.
The North’s planned course was not made clear in the report. Also, KCNA released images of Kim addressing officials while pointing to specific locations on what looked to be a blurry map of South Korea.
According to KCNA, Kim and the military commission members discussed planning for proposed military actions that their adversary would be unable to counter and discussed the security situation on the Korean Peninsula, “in which the US imperialists and the (South) Korean puppet traitors are getting ever more undisguised in their moves for a war of aggression.”
The US and South Korean militaries held separate joint naval and air force drills involving an American aircraft carrier strike group and nuclear-capable US bombers, as well as their largest field exercises in years. The exercises, according to KCNA, transmitted threats to seize Pyongyang and decapitate its leaders and mimicked an all-out war against North Korea.
In order to deal with the North’s changing threats, the United States and South Korea have classified their drills as defensive in nature and said that they must be expanded. The administration of South Korea did not immediately reply to Kim’s remarks.
Up to this point in 2023, North Korea has launched over 30 missiles in 11 distinct launch events, including numerous shorter-range weapons intended to carry out nuclear attacks on South Korean targets and intercontinental ballistic missiles that have shown the ability to reach the US mainland.
With roughly 70 missile launches in 2022, the North was already coming off a record-breaking year for weapons testing.
According to experts, Kim’s aggressive series of weapons demonstrations is intended to persuade the United States that the North is a nuclear state and to provide him leverage when negotiating economic concessions.
Because to differences in the harsh US-led sanctions on the North and the North’s actions to wind down its nuclear weapons development, nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang have been inactive since 2019.
North Korea, according to South Korean officials, may soon up the ante by staging more provocative military displays, including its first nuclear test explosion since 2017.
In response to Kim’s request for his nuclear scientists to increase production of weapons-grade material to make bombs to go on his expanding range of weapons, North Korea unveiled what appeared to be a new nuclear warhead last month.
In addition, North Korea has made subliminal threats to test launch an ICBM on a normal ballistic trajectory towards the Pacific, which would be viewed as a serious provocation given that its previous long-range tests were carried out at high angles to avoid neighbouring countries’ territories.
The North has already said that it intends to complete the necessary steps for the launch of a military surveillance satellite into orbit by April, an action that its enemies would undoubtedly interpret as a demonstration of ICBM technology that is prohibited by UN sanctions.