Kim Jong Un has called for an “exponential” increase in North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, including mass-producing tactical nuclear weapons and developing new missiles for nuclear counterstrikes, state media said Sunday.
In a report at the end of a key party meeting in Pyongyang, Kim said the country must “strengthen its military muscle” in 2023 in response to what he called US-South Korean hostility, official KCNA reported.
Claiming that Washington and Seoul were set to “isolate and stifling” the North, Kim said his country would focus on “mass production of tactical nuclear weapons” and developing “another ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) system whose main mission is rapid nuclear counterstrike”.
The goal is the “main orientation” of the 2023 nuclear and defense strategy, the report said.
Military tensions on the Korean peninsula rose sharply in 2022 as the North conducted almost monthly tests of sanctions-busting weapons, including firing its most advanced ICBMs.
It capped the year’s record launch by firing three short-range ballistic missiles on Saturday, and carried out its last launch of the night at 2:50 a.m. (1750 GMT Saturday) on Sunday, Seoul’s military said.
KCNA officially reported Sunday that the launch was a “test of a super-large rocket launcher”.
In a separate KCNA report, Kim said the weapons put South Korea “entirely within strike range and (can) carry (a) tactical nuclear warhead”.
North Korea emphasized this “to warn of the possibility of real action”, said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“North Korea signals a change in tactics by indirectly pressuring the United States by pressuring South Korea and increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula from this year.”
The launch comes just days after Seoul attacked its fighter jets when five North Korean drones entered the South’s airspace Monday.
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– Another Ukraine? –
Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University, said the North’s latest statement showed “they are preparing for the possibility of a real war beyond the collapse of inter-Korean relations”.
He warned that if the US and South Korea respond, as expected, by increasing military exercises, tensions between the two Koreas will reach “unprecedented levels” in 2023.
“It would be a reasonable prediction that the Korean peninsula could become a second Ukraine if things go wrong,” he said.
By 2022, Kim has said he wants his country to have the world’s most powerful nuclear power and has declared the North an “irreversible” nuclear state.
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North Korea has talked about mass producing nuclear weapons before, said Go Myong-hyun, a researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
“The goal is that if North Korea produces nuclear weapons, even without aggressive provocation, the United States will have no choice but to recognize North Korea as a nuclear state,” he told AFP.
“Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s message was like ‘Let’s play nuclear weapons,'” he added.
The report came at the end of a major party meeting in Pyongyang where Kim and other senior officials outlined policy goals for 2023 in key areas including diplomacy, security and the economy.
In past years, Kim has delivered a speech on January 1, but he recently broke with that tradition to make the announcement at the end-of-year plenary session.
North Korea also plans to launch its first military satellite “at the earliest possible date”, KCNA said – a goal South Korea is also pursuing, having successfully tested a solid fuel space launch vehicle.
“North Korea ended the year with a bang, but the new missile launch was not technically impressive,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
But “provocations, including drone strikes, appear too big to deter and may be intended to intimidate South Korea into adopting a softer policy”.
With Kim rejecting diplomacy and threatening to mass-produce nuclear weapons, South Korea is likely to increase its own defense capacity and readiness, he said.
“If China does not want the regional instability of an inter-Korean arms race at its doorstep, it must do more to deter Pyongyang in 2023.”