Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, displays and tests a new war tank

SEOUL: As joint drills between Seoul and Washington to strengthen deterrence come to an end, official media in North Korea said on Thursday that leader Kim Jong Un was operating a “new-type main battle tank” and supervising military training exercises.
Images released by official media showed Kim, dressed in a black leather jacket, saluting rows of soldiers dressed in camouflage and watching live-fire “training march” drills from a field command post, accompanied by senior generals.

According to the official Korean Central News Agency, Kim “mounted a new-type main battle tank, seized the control lever, and drove the tank himself” after reviewing the tank crews.
The KCNA story was released on the day of Seoul and Washington’s annual Freedom Shield exercises, which include air assault and missile interception maneuvers, among other things.
The nuclear-armed North has long denounced joint military exercises between the US and South Korea, claiming they are invasion practices. It has conducted weapons tests in the past in reaction to such cooperative exercises.
Kim reportedly “expressed great satisfaction over the fact that the new-type main battle tank successfully demonstrated its very excellent striking power,”  according to the KCNA report.
In addition, the North Korean leader emphasized the “need to organize intensive exercises simulating an actual war” and the “importance of the role and duty of tankmen in modern warfare..”.
Last week, Pyongyang said that Kim had led a massive artillery practice with a unit that it claimed was capable of hitting the capital of South Korea, and it threatened that the US and the South would pay a “dear price” for the drills.
Shin Won-sik, the defense minister of South Korea, paid a visit to the army’s Special Warfare Command headquarters on Wednesday as part of the continuing Washington-Seoul exercises, which focused on “mastering advanced combat skills.”
This included “clearing operations” inside “key facilities” in North Korea in the event that Pyongyang launched an assault.
“If Kim Jong Un wages war, you should become the world’s strongest special warfare unit that quickly removes the enemy’s leadership,” Shin said during his visit.
The North has labeled South Korea as its “principal enemy” so far this year, disbanded organizations tasked with outreach and reunification, and threatened to go to war for “even 0.001 mm” of territorial offense.