Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea led two days of military drills “simulating a nuclear counterattack”, including the shot of a ballistic missile having a simulated nuclear warhead, state news agency KCNA reported Monday.
Kim voiced “satisfaction” over the drills, which were held to “let relevant units get familiar with the methods and procedures for executing their tactical nuclear attack missions”, the report said.
The drills were the fourth show of force from North Korea in a week and came as South Korea and the United States stage their military maneuvers. North Korea considers all such drills as trials for invasion and has often alerted it would take “overwhelming” action in response.
Saturday and Sunday’s drills were divided into drills imitating the shift to a nuclear counterattack pose and a drill for launching a tactical ballistic missile tipped with a simulated nuclear warhead, KCNA said. State media added that the missile was tipped with a test warhead simulating a nuclear warhead.
On Sunday, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said that the short-range ballistic missile blasted by North Korea flew 800 kilometers (500 miles) before landing in the East Sea (Sea of Japan).
They branded it a “serious provocation” that disobeyed United Nations sanctions and said it was being analyzed by US and South Korean intelligence. Japan has also denounced the launch, as did the US military’s Indo-Pacific Command.
South Korea and the US have ramped up defense cooperation in front of growing military and nuclear threats from the North, which has led to a sequence of prohibited weapons trials in recent months. The flurry of aggression by North Korea has also pushed South Korea and Japan to fix fences over historical conflicts and try to increase security cooperation.
On Thursday, North Korea test-fired its largest and most influential intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-17, its second ICBM test this year. The ICBM launch followed two short-range ballistic missiles on Tuesday and two strategic cruise missiles blasted from a submarine last Sunday.
The UN Security Council is expected to hold an emergency meeting on Monday over the ICBM launch at the appeal of the United States and Japan, Yonhap news agency reported. Kim said the exercises on Saturday and Sunday had loaded the North Korean military units “with great confidence”, according to KCNA.
He also noted that the North “cannot really prevent a war with the mere fact that it is a nuclear weapons state,” and said that the country could only achieve its goals “when the nuclear force is perfected as a means of actually capable of mounting an attack on the enemy.” Kim also instructed the North Korean military this month to strengthen drills to prepare for a “real war”.
