Seoul, South Korea –
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a live-fire drill of multiple launchers of nuclear-capable “super-large” rockets designed to target South Korea’s capital as he vowed to increase his war deterrence in the face of escalating confrontations. deep with their rivals, state media said. Tuesday.
The report came a day after the militaries of South Korea and Japan said they detected North Korea firing multiple short-range ballistic missiles into waters off its eastern coast, adding to a series of weapons displays. that have increased regional tensions.
Experts say North Korea’s large artillery rockets blur the lines between artillery systems and ballistic missiles because they can create their own thrust and are guided during their launch. North Korea has described some of these systems, including the 600mm multiple rocket launchers that were tested on Monday, as capable of carrying tactical nuclear warheads.
Photos released by the North’s Korean Central News Agency showed at least six rockets fired simultaneously from launch vehicles and flames and smoke covering what appeared to be a small island target.
The KCNA said North Korean troops after the salvo launches also carried out a separate test that simulated a midair explosion of an artillery shell at a preset altitude. The report did not specify whether that test was to rehearse how a nuclear weapon would be detonated on an enemy target.
Kim called the 600mm multiple rocket launchers key pieces of his growing arsenal of weapons that are supposedly capable of destroying Seoul, South Korea’s capital, if another war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula.
“(Kim) said it is necessary to further instill in enemies that if armed conflict and war breaks out, they will never be able to avoid disastrous consequences,” KCNA said. He called on his army to “further fulfill its mission of blocking and suppressing the possibility of war with constant and perfect preparation to collapse the enemy’s capital and the structure of its military forces.”
The North Korean launches came days after the end of the latest combined military exercises between South Korea and the United States that the North describes as an invasion rehearsal. It was unclear whether North Korea timed the launches with a visit to Seoul by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on Monday attended a democracy summit and held talks with South Korean officials about the North Korean threat.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have risen since 2022, after Kim used the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a distraction to accelerate his tests of missiles and other weapons. The United States and South Korea have responded by expanding their combined training and trilateral exercises involving Japan and updating their deterrence strategies based on American strategic assets.
There are concerns that North Korea could further increase pressure in an election year in the United States and South Korea.
In a fiery speech to Pyongyang’s parliament in January, Kim declared he was abandoning North Korea’s long-standing goal of reconciliation with the South and ordered a rewrite of the North’s constitution to cement his war-divided rival as its most hostile adversary. . . He said the new letter must specify that North Korea will annex and subjugate the South if another war breaks out.