SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has pledged to increase his country’s nuclear capabilities, declaring that he will build intercontinental ballistic missiles launched by land and submarine, as well as making his nuclear missiles smaller and smaller. lighter and more precisely, Northern state media reported on Saturday.
Mr Kim’s statement comes as President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. prepares to take office, succeeding President Trump. Kim and Trump have met three times, but their meetings have failed to produce a breakthrough at the end of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program or in lifting the devastating sanctions the United Nations has imposed on the country for its arms activities.
But despite his promise to advance his country’s arsenal, Kim, speaking to his Workers Party congress, said he “does not rule out diplomacy”. He said that his effort to strengthen his country’s arms capacity was designed to gain an advantage in dealing with Washington and its allies, in order to “lead diplomacy in the right direction and ensure its success” in achieving “peace” on the Korean Peninsula. .
He said he would adjust his policy in line with that of the next Biden government, “responding to force with strength and goodwill with goodwill”.
“Our foreign political activities must focus on controlling and subduing the United States, our archenemy and the biggest obstacle to the development of our revolution,” said Kim. “No matter who takes power in the United States, its true nature and its policy towards our country will never change.”
Kim’s comments, conveyed by North Korea’s Central News Agency early Saturday, marked his first official reaction to Biden’s election to replace Trump.
Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump began their relationship with an intense exchange of insults and personal threats, including Trump’s warning of “fire and fury”. Then they made a dramatic shift to diplomacy, meeting in Singapore in 2018 on the first day. ever at a summit meeting between the two nations. Trump later said that he “fell in love” with the North Korean dictator, who once called him a “mentally disturbed American lapse”
During his report to the party’s congress, Kim outlined plans to make his nuclear weapons “small and light” as well as to continue to build “super big nuclear warheads,” the North Korean news agency said.
He also ordered his country to improve the accuracy of its intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as to develop long-range solid-fuel ballistic missiles to be launched from land and submarines. And he instructed his military to build a nuclear-powered submarine.
Submarine and solid-fuel missiles are considered more difficult to detect for pre-emptive strikes, and North Korea has conducted several tests in recent years in an attempt to convert many of its short-range missiles from liquid fuel to solid.
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It is not yet clear how quickly North Korea can achieve the ambitious arms development goals that Kim set.
When North Korea launched Hwasong-15 in late 2017, it said the missile could hit any part of the continental United States by carrying a nuclear warhead. Although North Korea tested three intercontinental ballistic missiles in flight, all in 2017, it has not yet been demonstrated whether it has the necessary technology to protect a nuclear warhead during atmospheric reentry and deliver the weapon to its target.
The party’s congress, the biggest political event in North Korea, was being watched closely by outside analysts for clues as to how Kim can calibrate his policy towards Washington under the Biden government.
Since the collapse of his diplomacy with Trump, Kim has refrained from resuming nuclear or long-range missile testing. He seemed to be waiting for the November election in the United States, deciding not to provoke Trump, who repeatedly praised his special “personal relationship” with the North Korean dictator.
But the display of a new and larger ICBM during an overnight military parade in Pyongyang in October was also designed to demonstrate the growing military threat from the North and to pressure those who won the US elections to make concessions to North Korea, analysts said.
Mr Kim called the party congress this week amid growing challenges at home.
When North Korea held its last party congress in 2016, it was the first such meeting in 36 years and it was Kim’s biggest revelation event as a leader. There, he adopted his ambitious five-year goals, promising to build a “great socialist country” by 2020, which would have a nuclear arsenal and a growing economy.
Things did not go as Mr. Kim had expected.
Since taking control of his country after the death of his father and predecessor, Kim Jong-il, in 2011, Kim has accelerated his country’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
But the United Nations Security Council responded by imposing devastating sanctions, which caused its exports to plummet.
In his New Year’s message 12 months ago, Kim sounded defiant, saying that his country would work hard on sanctions and build a “self-sufficient” economy, even if it meant that its suffering people would have to “tighten their belts” again.
Soon after, however, North Korea was hit by the pandemic, which forced the country to close its borders with China, its main trading partner. Then came the great damage caused by the floods.
When Kim opened the party’s congress on Tuesday, he admitted that his efforts to rebuild the country’s dying economy had failed.
“Our five-year economic development plan fell far short of its goals in almost every sector,” said Kim, as the country struggled with “a series of the worst unprecedented crises.”