SEOUL, Aug 10 (AP): North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his military to sharpen its war plans
and signed off on expanding combat operations of frontline units, state media said on Thursday, as
the United States and South Korea prepare for a large-scale combined military exercise.
Condemning the allies’ expanding drills as invasion rehearsals, Kim has used them as a pretext to
further accelerate his weapons demonstrations, which have included the testing-firings of more than
100 missiles since the start of 2022, driving tensions on the Korean Peninsula to their highest point
in years.
Experts say Kim’s nuclear push is aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of the North
as a nuclear power so he can eventually negotiate economic and security concessions from a
position of strength.
Thursday’s meeting of the North Korean ruling Workers’ Party’s central military commission, which
Kim controls as chairman, was to discuss advancing his military’s war readiness and establishing
offensive countermeasure plans to deter his adversaries, which state media said were getting more
blatant in their “reckless military confrontation” with the North.
During the meeting, Kim stressed that the military must acquire “more powerful strike means” to
bolster his nuclear deterrent and make speedier deployments of those weapons to combat units. He
called for the country’s munitions industry to step up mass production of various weapons and
systems, and for the military to actively conduct “actual war drills” to digest those systems and
enhance its war-fighting capabilities, KCNA said.
Photos of the meeting published by state media showed Kim pointing to spots in a blurred map of
the Korean Peninsula. The spots appeared to be the metropolitan region surrounding the South
Korean capital of Seoul, where half of the country’s 51 million people live, and an area around the
central city of Daejeon, the location of South Korea’s army headquarters.
Kim also made personnel changes during the meeting, appointing Vice Marshal Ri Yong Gil as his
new chief of general staff to replace Gen. Pak Su Il, KCNA said.
Since he began his rule in late 2011, Kim has shown a tendency to swiftly replace senior government
and military officials if he was unhappy with their performances or needed to hold them responsible
for broader policy failures, which the North never pins on its supreme leader.
The decision to sack Pak eight months into the job possibly indicates that Kim was dissatisfied about
his ability to craft military strategies and went back to a more trusted hand in Ri, who had a lengthy
previous stint as chief of general staff, said Cheong Seong-Chang, a senior analyst at South Korea’s
Sejong Institute.
When asked about Kim’s comments, Lee Sung Joon, spokesperson of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said during a briefing that the U.S. and South Korean intelligence authorities were closely
monitoring North Korean weapons development activities and possibilities of provocations. He did
not discuss it further.
Kim’s comments during the meeting echoed what he said last week during a three-day tour of the
country’s key weapons factories, including a facility that produces launcher trucks for his
intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to target the U.S. mainland, and called for significant
improvements to the country’s arms and war readiness.
Kim’s visits also included an artillery factory that deepened outside concerns that North Korea was
preparing to export artillery and other arms supplies to Russia as President Vladimir Putin reaches
out to other countries for support in the war in Ukraine.
In the face of deepening confrontations with Washington and Seoul, Kim has been trying boost the
visibility of his partnerships with Moscow and Beijing to break out of diplomatic isolation and insert
himself into a united front against the U.S.
Kim invited Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and a Chinese ruling party officials to share
center stage at a giant military parade in Pyongyang where he rolled out his most powerful missiles
designed to target South Korea and the United States. Shoigu’s presence at the July 27 parade came
after Kim took him on a tour of a domestic arms exhibition, which demonstrated North Korea’s
support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and added to suspicions the North was willing to supply
arms to Russia.
During Thursday’s meeting, North Korean officials also agreed to hold another military parade to
mark the 75th anniversary of its government’s founding. The Sept. 9 parade would be the country’s
third event in 2023 alone. Analysts say the North has never staged military parades more than twice
in the same year.
