Leader Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential increase in North Korea’s nuclear arsenal” to deal with its southern neighbor and the United States, signaling a continuation in 2023 of the dangerous tensions on the Korean peninsula that had already characterized 2022. .
At the end of an important meeting in Pyongyang, the ruling Workers’ Party also announced that the country “will develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system whose main mission will be a rapid nuclear counterattack,” the official KCNA news agency reported on Sunday. .
South Korea now “fully within striking distance”
“The current situation calls for redoubling efforts to massively increase military force to fully guarantee (North Korea’s) sovereignty, security and core interests in response to disruptive military exercises by the United States and other hostile forces,” Kim said. Jong Un at a press conference. report of the meeting cited by the agency.
“This underscores the importance and necessity of mass production of tactical nuclear weapons and calls for an exponential increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal,” he continued.
In a separate dispatch, the KNCA reported on Kim Jong Un’s comments that South Korea was now “fully within range” of North Korea’s nuclear strikes.
“The most powerful strategic force in the world”
Tension has risen sharply in recent months between North Korea and its southern neighbor, as well as the United States and Japan. The year 2022 has seen a record number of missile launches by Pyongyang.
North Korea still fired three short-range ballistic missiles on Saturday and another on Sunday at dawn. KCNA referred to “a very large multiple rocket launch exercise.”
And on December 26, five North Korean drones entered southern airspace, including flying over the northern capital, Seoul. Despite the five-hour deployment of fighter jets and helicopters, the southern army was unable to shoot down the drones during this raid, the first of its kind in five years.
Kim Jong Un had already said at the end of November that he wanted to provide his country with “the most powerful strategic force in the world.” Two months earlier, North Korea had adopted a new doctrine that made its status as a nuclear power “irreversible” and authorized it to carry out a preemptive atomic strike in the event of an existential threat against its regime.
Seoul and Washington give Pyongyang the intention to carry out another nuclear test soon, which would be the seventh in its history and the first since 2017. North Korean leaders assure that a credible nuclear deterrent is essential for the survival of their country, which says it is constantly threatened with aggression by the United States.
Source: BFM TV
