North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, observes marksmanship training at an undisclosed military base in North Korea on March 6, 2024. (Korean Central News Agency)
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called on his country’s army Wednesday to “further intensify” its training for war as U.S. and South Korean troops continued their own large-scale exercise, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency report the next day.
Kim visited an unidentified military base in western North Korea to observe marksmanship training and troops practicing to clear buildings, according to KCNA’s report and photos.
The “high intensity” combat drills in preparation for “an actual war” were also observed by North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun Nam, KCNA reported.
Kim “set forth the important tasks for intensifying the practical actual-war drills ensuring the victory in a war,” the report said.
Kim’s inspection comes a day after his country’s military criticized the ongoing U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise, Freedom Shield. The exercise is a reckless maneuver and practice for an invasion of North Korea, according to the defense ministry in Pyongyang.
“The large-scale war drills staged by the world’s biggest nuclear weapons state … in the Korean Peninsula, where a nuclear war may be ignited even with a spark, can never be called ‘defensive,’ ” the ministry said in a KCNA report.
North Korean troops train at an undisclosed military base in North Korea on March 6, 2024. (Korean Central News Agency)
The 11-day Freedom Shield exercise kicked off Monday and includes 48 joint drills by U.S. and South Korean forces, twice the number of drills from the previous year, according to the South’s military. The drills will be held throughout South Korea and will include air assault, air-to-air, air-to-surface and cyber-related operations.
The exercise, which includes 11 other U.N. Command member states, are defensive in nature and will better “fortify the combined defense posture and enhance alliance response capabilities against a spectrum of security threats,” U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement Feb. 27.
North Korea previously conducted weapons tests — an act the South’s military characterizes as a provocation — during large-scale military exercises by the U.S. and South Korea.
During the allies’ 10-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise in late August, North Korea launched a spy satellite that failed to reach orbit on Aug. 24 and two short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea, or Sea of Japan, on Aug. 30.
“The South Korean military will maintain a firm readiness and overwhelmingly respond … if North Korea provokes,” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Jeon Ha Gyu said during a news conference Thursday.
North Korea fired cruise missiles for five days over a 10-day span starting Jan. 24, according to the South’s Ministry of National Defense. Ten days earlier the communist regime fired a solid-fueled intermediate-range ballistic missile that flew roughly 620 miles before splashing down in the East Sea.
