Kim Jong Un of North Korea demands increased war preparations against the US and South Korea
Pyongyang North Korea’s defense ministry promised to react to ongoing military drills between its two main rivals, which Pyongyang views as an invasion rehearsal. On Thursday, state media reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had called for greater war-fighting capabilities against the United States and South Korea. North Korea has tested missiles and other weapons in response to prior military drills between the US and South Korea.
Kim said that the military has to “steadily intensify the actual war drills aimed at rapidly improving its combat capabilities for perfect war preparedness” on Wednesday while on a visit to a Western operational training camp, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. As military personnel conducted drills at the location, Kim led the way and said that “the constant threat of the enemies with overwhelming force” calls for heightened preparedness.
The leader of North Korea also visited the main military operations base to go over the soldiers’ field training. KCNA reports that he said that the military has to “dynamically usher in a new heyday of intensifying the war preparations in line with the requirements of the prevailing situation.”
US-Korea military exercises
His most recent demand was made two days after the Defense Ministry of North Korea warned to carry out vague “responsible military activities” due to the claimed increasing transparency of South Korean-US military maneuvers that seemed to be an effort to invade the North. On Monday, the two allies started an 11-day run of computer-simulated command post training and other field exercises.
There will be twice as many field exercises in this year’s drills as there were in the previous one, 48 total. Both nations have said that their exercises are defensive in character, given North Korea’s ongoing efforts to enhance its armaments and its bellicose threats of nuclear war with the US and its allies in Asia. In January, North Korea conducted tests of a new solid-fuel intermediate-range missile as well as several long-range cruise missiles.
The Korean Peninsula is tense.
North Korea conducted six rounds of missile testing in 2024. In response, the military of the US, South Korea, and Japan increased the scope of their training exercises. After North Korea began testing missiles in large quantities in 2022, tensions on the Korean Peninsula are still high.
According to experts, North Korea probably thinks that having a larger stockpile of weapons would give it more clout in negotiations with the US in the future. They claim that even with significant restrictions lifted, North Korea would still want to have its nuclear weapons. As South Korea and the US prepare for elections, North Korea is predicted to test more provocative weapons, further inflaming tensions.
According to academics and officials in South Korea, Kim’s weapons push has exacerbated the country’s already fragile economy, which has been severely damaged by years of mismanagement and sanctions imposed by the US due to Kim’s nuclear aspirations. Kim has also ordered a rewriting of the North’s constitution to identify the South as its most hostile foreign opponent, signaling a break from the long-standing objective of peaceful unification with South Korea.
Although North Korean cruise missile programs aren’t explicitly prohibited by UN sanctions, analysts believe South Korea and Japan might be seriously threatened by these weapons. They are made to be more difficult to find using radar, and according to North Korea, they are nuclear weapons with a 2,000 km range, which would allow them to reach US military installations in Japan.
