SEOUL- North Korea conducted tests of an upgraded long-range cruise missile and a warhead of a tactical guided missile this week, as leader Kim Jong Un visited a munitions factory producing a “major weapon system,” state media KCNA said on Friday.
Tension has been simmering over North Korea’s series of six weapons tests in 2022, among the largest number of missile launches it has made in a month, Reuters reported. The launches have triggered international condemnation and a new sanctions push from the United States.
An update to a long-range cruise missile system was tested on Tuesday, and another test was held to confirm the power of a conventional warhead for a surface-to-surface tactical guided missile on Thursday, KCNA said.
Kim did not attend the tests, but during a visit to the munitions factory, he lauded “leaping progress in producing major weapons” to implement the ruling Workers’ Party’s decisions made at a meeting last month, a separate dispatch said.
“The factory holds a very important position and duty in modernising the country’s armed forces and realising the national defence development strategy,” Kim said.
KCNA did not specify the weapons or the factory’s location. Kim called for bolstering national defences to tackle an unstable international situation at that party gathering.
At the factory, Kim called for “an all-out drive” to produce “powerful cutting-edge arms,” and its workers touted his devotion to “smashing … the challenges of the US imperialists and their vassal forces” seeking to violate their right to self-defence, calling it “the harshest-ever adversity.”
Pyongyang has defended missile launches as its sovereign right to self-defence and accused Washington and Seoul of double standards here over weapons tests.
No intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or nuclear weapons have been tested in North Korea since 2017 but a spate of short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) launches began amid stalled denuclearisation talks following a failed summit with the United States in 2019.
US Department of Defence Press Secretary John Kirby condemned the latest launches as “destabilising,” and called on Pyongyang to “stop these provocations”.
The European Union also issued a statement saying the tests posed a threat to international and regional peace and security and undermined efforts to resume dialogue and help the country’s people.
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