North Korea marked the delivery of 250 nuclear-capable missile launchers to frontline military units at a ceremony where leader Kim Jong Un called for a ceaseless expansion of his military’s nuclear programme to counter perceived US threats, state media said.
Concerns about Mr Kim’s nuclear programme have grown as he has demonstrated an intent to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons along the country’s border with South Korea and authorised his military to respond with pre-emptive nuclear strikes if it perceives the leadership as under threat.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the launchers were freshly produced by the country’s munitions factories and designed to fire “tactical” ballistic missiles, a term that describes systems capable of delivering lower-yield nuclear weapons.
Mr Kim said at Sunday’s event in Pyongyang the new launchers would give his frontline units “overwhelming” firepower over South Korea and make the operation of tactical nuclear weapons more practical and efficient.
State media photos showed lines of army-green launcher trucks packing a large street with seemingly thousands of spectators attending the event, which included fireworks.
North Korea has been expanding its line-up of mobile short-range weapons designed to overwhelm missile defences in South Korea, while also pursuing intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the US mainland.
Mr Kim’s intensifying weapons tests and threats are widely seen as an attempt at pressuring the United States to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and to end US-led sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear program.
North Korea also could seek to dial up tensions in a US election year, experts say.
Mr Kim lately has used Russia’s war on Ukraine as a distraction to further accelerate his weapons development.
In response, the United States, South Korea and Japan have been expanding their combined military exercises and sharpening their nuclear deterrence strategies built around strategic US military assets.
In his speech at Sunday’s event, Mr Kim called for his country to brace for a prolonged confrontation with the United States and urged a relentless expansion of military strength.
He justified his military build-up as a counter to the “increasingly savage” military cooperation between the United States and its regional allies, which he claimed are now showing the characteristics of a “nuclear-based military bloc.”
“It would be our choice to either pursue dialogue or confrontation, but our lesson and conclusion from the past 30 years … is that confrontation is what we should be prepared more thoroughly for,” Mr Kim said.
“The United States we are facing is not just an administration that comes and goes after a few years, but a hostile nation that our children and grandchildren will be dealing for generations to come and that also illustrates the necessity to continuously improve our self-defence capabilities.”
Mr Kim also said the decision to hold the weapons ceremony while the country was trying to recover from disastrous flooding showed its determination to “push ahead with the strengthening of our national defence capabilities force without stagnation under any circumstances.”
The floods in late July submerged thousands of homes and huge swaths of farmland in regions near the border with China.
Russia has offered flood aid to North Korea, in another sign of expanding relations between the two nations.
