AP – SEOUL, South Korea Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, oversaw a live-fire artillery drill simulating an assault on a South Korean airfield and ordered his troops to be prepared to counter any “frantic war preparation moves” by their adversaries. It appears that he was alluding to the recent round of military exercises between the US and South Korea.
A day after South Korea’s military discovered the North was launching at least one short-range ballistic missile into the ocean from a site close to the western coastal city of Nampo, the North’s state media reported on Friday. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the South was examining if further missiles might have been launched at the same time.
Long-range B-1B and B-52 bombers from the United States have recently flown multiple rounds of cooperative aerial drills with South Korean fighter jets. In order to confront the mounting threat posed by Kim’s expanding nuclear weapons, the allies are also getting ready for their largest joint field training exercise in years this month. Regular U.S.-South Korean military drills are seen as invasion practice by North Korea.
Kim reportedly encouraged his forces to be ready to “overwhelmingly respond to and contain” the military action of the North’s foes, who he claimed were moving forward with “all sorts of increasingly frenzied war preparation actions,” according to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.He said frontline units should sharpen their capabilities to carry out their two main “strategic missions, that is, first to deter war and second to take the initiative in war.”
South Korea’s Unification Ministry later Friday urged North Korea to stop raising tensions with “reckless nuclear and missile programs and military provocations.” Vice spokesperson Lee Hyo-jung told reporters that North Korea must focus instead on caring for people’s livelihoods and take a path toward building peace on the Korean Peninsula.
The KCNA report did not specify what types of weapons were involved in Thursday’s exercise or how many rockets were fired. Some of the North’s newer short-range weapons targeting South Korea includes large-sized multiple rocket launchers that experts say blur the boundaries between artillery and ballistic missile systems.
North Korea describes some of its more advanced short-range systems as tactical weapons, which implies an intent to arm them with lower-yield battlefield nuclear weapons.
