World News | North Korean leader orders military to boost readiness

SEOUL (South Korea), Feb. 7 (AP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his military to expand combat drills and boost readiness, as he looks to escalate an already escalating war in the face of deepening tensions. Provocative weapons display. Neighbors and Washington.

Kim Jong Un presided over a meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party on Monday and encouraged the armed forces to “repeatedly win battles” and demonstrate “unparalleled military strength” to start a new stage of development, the country’s official Korean Central News agency reported Tuesday.

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Members of the committee discussed a series of tasks aimed at triggering “major changes” in the military, including “continuously expanding and strengthening operations and combat exercises” and “more rigorously improving combat readiness,” the agency said.

The meeting came amid signs that North Korea was preparing for a massive military parade in the capital, Pyongyang, to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army on Wednesday.

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Kim is likely to use the event to showcase the latest hardware from his growing nuclear weapons and missile programs, which are drawing attention from the United States and its allies in Asia.

The meeting’s comments were the latest warning from Pyongyang that it was preparing to intensify military demonstrations after a year of record-breaking missile tests.

The warnings were in part a response to the expansion of U.S. military exercises with South Korea that allies say are designed to counter the evolving threat from North Korea.

Last week, North Korea condemned U.S. plans to expand joint exercises with South Korea and deploy more advanced military assets such as bombers and aircraft carriers to the region, threatening to counter U.S. military operations with “the most overwhelming nuclear force”.

North Korea has launched more than 70 ballistic missiles in 2022, including potentially nuclear weapons aimed at hitting targets in South Korea or reaching the U.S. mainland.

It also conducted a series of launches, said to be mock nuclear attacks on South Korean and U.S. targets, in response to expanded U.S. military exercises with South Korea that were scaled back during the Trump administration.

At a key political meeting in December, Kim Jong-un called for an “exponential growth” of the country’s nuclear warheads, the mass production of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons against South Korea and the development of more powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States.

Experts say Kim’s weapons tests and threats are aimed at forcing Washington to accept the idea of ​​North Korea as a nuclear power, which Pyongyang sees as a way to negotiate economic and political concessions from a position of strength.

Diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang has stalled since 2019, with the two remaining at odds over U.S.-led economic sanctions on North Korea and North Korea’s nuclear program. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)