North Korea’s Kim pledges to speed up war readiness, dismisses top general

In the face of deepening confrontations with Washington and Seoul, Kim has been trying boost the visibility of his partnerships with Moscow and Beijing.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un toured the country’s key weapons factories, including those producing artillery systems and launch vehicles for nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, and pledged to speed up efforts to advance his military’s arms and war readiness, state media said Sunday.

Kim’s three-day inspections through Saturday came as the United States and South Korea prepared for their next round of combined military exercises planned for later this month to counter the growing North Korean threat.

Kim also dismissed the military’s top general, chief of the General Staff Pak Su Il, at the meeting, KCNA reported, without elaborating.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest level in years as the pace of North Korea’s missile tests and the joint U.S.-South Korea military drills, which Kim portrays as invasion rehearsals, have both intensified in a tit-for-tat cycle.

Some experts say Kim’s tour of the weapons factories could also be related to possible military cooperation with Moscow that may involve North Korean supplies of artillery and other ammunition as Russian President Vladimir Putin reaches out to other countries for support in the war in Ukraine. Koo Byoungsam, spokesperson of South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said Friday that Kim’s staged visits to the arms factories are possibly aimed at both demonstrating North Korea’s military might in the face of U.S.-South Korean drills and also communicating an intent to export weapons.

“We express deep regret that North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons and ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) as well as conventional weapons at the expense of the wellbeing of its citizens,” Koo said during a briefing.

During a visit to an unspecified factory producing large-caliber artillery systems, Kim stressed the facility’s “important responsibility and duty” in further boosting his military’s “war preparations,” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

Kim praised the factory’s efforts to employ “scientific and technological measures” to improve the quality of shells, reduce processing times for propellent tubes and increase manufacturing speed. He also urged the factory to move ahead with development and large-scale production of new kinds of ammunition, the KCNA said.