Days after its rivals in the region staged a historic summit, and as joint military drills between the US and South Korea begin nearby, North Korean official media revealed pictures of its leader Kim Jong Un inspecting a missile launch on Monday.
Kim was reportedly present to see the launch of strategic cruise missiles from a patrol ship that is a part of the North Korean Navy’s East Sea Fleet, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Kim was on board the patrol ship as it was examined for armaments and combat readiness. According to KCNA, Kim “highly praised the ship for maintaining high mobility and mighty striking power and constant preparedness for combat to cope with sudden situation.”
The missile test, it was stated, showed off the ship’s capabilities and trained the sailors for “carrying out the attack mission in actual war.”
Kim can be seen in photos published by KCNA, standing on the ship’s deck next to uniformed sailors while wearing a white and black outfit. Other images capture the actual test, in which a missile is seen launching from a ship in a cloud of smoke.
While the article did not mention the test’s date, KCNA published the images on Monday, the first day of the US and South Korea’s ten-day, extensive joint military exercises.
In response to the rising risks in the Indo-Pacific region and North Korea’s quick expansion of its own nuclear testing programme, the two nations have recently boosted their military and economic cooperation.
According to South Korean authorities, suspected North Korean hackers allegedly targeted a company involved in the exercises on Sunday, just before the joint manoeuvres started. However, the security system stopped them, and no military-related data was taken. The US military and South Korean officials are currently investigating the hacking attempt.
Seoul also reacted to the North Korean missile exercise on Monday, labelling state media claims as “exaggerated and in many cases different from the facts.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the nation stated that Seoul and Washington were both keeping an eye on Pyongyang’s activities and that the South Korean military was prepared to “respond to any provocation by North Korea.”
After making a commitment to forge a stronger alliance during the first-ever stand-alone trilateral summit on Friday at Camp David in the US, the leaders of South Korea, Japan, and the US conducted a missile test shortly after.
Following their meeting, the three presidents unveiled a new yearly trilateral summit, a three-way hotline, and an agreement to hold yearly military drills and exchange intelligence.
The summit was a show of force against China’s military and economic aggressiveness and North Korea’s provocative behaviour, even though it did not result in a three-way collective defence agreement.
The three presidents reaffirmed their call for North Korea to denuclearize in their joint statement, asking it to “abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes,” and denouncing its “unprecedented number of ballistic missile launches.”