SEOUL, South Korea (Dispatches) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the “exponential” expansion of his country’s nuclear arsenal and the development of a more powerful intercontinental ballistic missile to counter the threat from the United States to his country’s sovereignty, state media reported Sunday.
Kim called “for an exponential increase of the country’s nuclear arsenal,” in a report at the end of a key party meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party in Pyongyang, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The North Korean leader said the move was aimed at countering threats from the U.S. and South Korea, and to defend the country’s “sovereignty and security.”
Citing U.S. and South Korean hostility, the report said the North needed “mass-producing of tactical nuclear weapons” and to “develop another ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) system whose main mission is quick nuclear counterstrike.”
The North Korean leader also ordered the manufacturing of a new type of ICBM “with a rapid nuclear counterattack capability as its basic mission,” KCNA reported.
He said the situation called for Pyongyang to “double down our efforts to strengthen our military power overwhelmingly” and “to safeguard our sovereignty, safety and basic national interest to cope with the dangerous military moves by the U.S. and other hostile forces that target us”, KCNA reported.
Kim’s remarks came hours after the North fired a short-range ballistic missile into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, in a launch that marked the nuclear-armed state’s second one in as many days.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency cited the South’s military as saying that the launch took place on Sunday morning.
The launch came less than a day after the North fired at least three short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea lying east of the Korean Peninsula.
Pyongyang says its new missiles are capable of carrying nuclear weapons with all of South Korea within their range.
The North says the tests are in response to the United States’ growing presence in the region and its joint military drills with the South and Japan. Pyongyang considers such exercises as a provocation and rehearsal for the invasion of its territory.
South Korea’s defense ministry has warned that any attempt by North Korea to use nuclear weapons would lead to the “end” of Pyongyang, after North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un called for an “exponential” increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal.
“We gravely warn that should North Korea make an attempt at using nuclear arms, it would lead to the end of the Kim Jong-un regime,” the South Korean defense ministry said in a text message sent to reporters on Sunday.
It stressed that it would deter and respond to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile alleged threats by “dramatically” reinforcing its “three-axis” defense system.
The three-axis system consists of the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation, an operational plan to incapacitate the North Korean leadership in a major conflict; the Kill Chain pre-emptive strike platform; and the Korea Air and Missile Defense system.
“Our military will build a military readiness posture to sternly retaliate against any symmetric or asymmetric North Korean provocations based on the determination not to hesitate to even go to war,” the ministry noted, adding, the “only way” to improve its nation’s livelihoods was to stop its nuclear development and return to a path of denuclearization.