North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called on his party to “accelerate” preparations for war. According to state press reports this Thursday (28), one of the goals is to breathe new life into North Korea's nuclear program.
Kim's request came a week after the Supreme Leader said the Asian country would not hesitate to launch a nuclear attack in the event of a “provocation” with nuclear weapons. Kim raised the issue at the plenary session of the Workers' Party of Korea, which governs the country, where policy decisions are expected to be announced in 2024.
The heir to the communist dynasty called on his party to “accelerate war preparations” in various areas such as nuclear weapons and civil defense, the official KCNA news agency reported. Kim assured that “the military situation” on the Korean Peninsula has become “extreme” due to Washington’s “unprecedented” actions.
South Korea, Japan and the United States have stepped up military cooperation amid a wave of North Korean weapons tests this year and activated a system to share realtime information about Pyongyang's missile launches.
A few weeks ago, an American nuclear submarine arrived in the South Korean port of Busan, and Washington sent longrange bombers to maneuvers with Seoul and Tokyo.
For Pyongyang, sending strategic weapons such as B52 bombers to joint exercises on the Korean Peninsula are “deliberately provocative actions by the United States toward nuclear war.”
This year, the North launched a reconnaissance satellite, enshrined its status as a nuclear power in its constitution and tested the most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in its arsenal. Kim this week defined 2023 as “a year of great change” in which his country won “revelatory victories.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said last week that a second reactor at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear power plant appeared to be operating, which it viewed as “deeply regrettable.”
Next year, North Korea could “send tactical nuclear weapons to areas near the border with the South” and expand its nuclear program, Ahn Chanil, a defectorturnedresearcher and director of the World Institute for North Studies, told AFP. Koreans. Pyongyang would do this to put pressure on South Korea and the United States while maintaining its close ties with traditional allies Russia and China.
At his party conference late last year, Kim called for “an exponential increase in the country's nuclear arsenal.”