North Korea’s Kim oversees delivery of 250 nuclear-capable missile launchers to border

Kim said at Sunday’s event in Pyongyang the new launchers would give his frontline units “overwhelming” firepower over South and make the operation of tactical nuclear weapons more practical and efficient.

“We believe (the missile launchers) are intended to be used in various ways, such to attack or threaten South Korea... Deploying near the border would mean that the range is not long,” Lee Sung-joon, spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a media briefing.

State media photos showed lines of army-green launcher trucks packing a large street with seemingly thousands of spectators attending the event, which included fireworks.

North Korea has been expanding its line-up of mobile short-range weapons designed to overwhelm missile defences in South Korea, while also pursuing intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the US mainland.

Kim’s intensifying weapons tests and threats are widely seen as an attempt at pressuring the United States to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and to end US-led sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear programme. North Korea also could seek to dial up tensions in a US election year, experts say.

Kim lately has used Russia’s war on Ukraine as a distraction to further accelerate his weapons development. In response, the United States, South Korea and Japan have been expanding their combined military exercises and sharpening their nuclear deterrence strategies built around strategic US military assets.

In his speech at Sunday’s event, Kim called for his country to brace for a prolonged confrontation with the United States and urged a relentless expansion of military strength.

He justified his military build-up as a counter to the “increasingly savage” military cooperation between the United States and its regional allies, which he claimed are now showing the characteristics of a “nuclear-based military bloc”.

“It would be our choice to either pursue dialogue or confrontation, but our lesson and conclusion from the past 30 years … is that confrontation is what we should be prepared more thoroughly for,” said Kim.

“The United States we are facing is not just an administration that comes and goes after a few years, but a hostile nation that our children and grandchildren will be dealing for generations to come and that also illustrates the necessity to continuously improve our self-defence capabilities.”

Kim also said the decision to hold the weapons ceremony while the country was trying to recover from disastrous flooding showed its determination to “push ahead with the strengthening of our national defence capabilities force without stagnation under any circumstances”.

The floods in late July submerged thousands of homes and huge swathes of farmland in regions near the border with China.

Russia has offered flood aid to North Korea, in another sign of expanding relations between the two nations.

Kim has made Russia his priority in recent months as he pushes a foreign policy aimed at expanding relations with countries confronting Washington, embracing the idea of a “new Cold War” and trying to display a united front in Putin’s broader conflicts with the West.

Additional reporting by Reuters