North Korea says Kim oversaw rocket launcher tests aimed at Seoul

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a live-fire drill of nuclear-capable “super-large” multiple rocket launchers designed to hit the South Korean capital, while pledging to reinforce war deterrence in the face of worsening confrontations with its rivals, state media said on Tuesday.

The information was published a day after the South and Japan revealed that they detected that the North fired several short-range ballistic missiles towards its eastern coast, in a new weapons display that has raised regional tensions.

Experts say large North Korean artillery rockets blur the lines between artillery systems and ballistic missiles because they can create their own momentum and are guided during launch. Pyongyang claimed that some of those systems, including the 600mm multiple rocket launchers tested on Monday, can carry tactical nuclear warheads.

Images published by the Korean Central News Agency showed at least six projectiles fired simultaneously from launch vehicles and flames and smoke covering what appeared to be a small target.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said later Tuesday that in its assessment, the North carried out more launches than shown in the photographs. Lieutenant Colonel Lee Chang-hyun, deputy spokesman for the organization, indicated that Seoul considers that the weapons tested the day before by Pyongyang are ballistic missiles due to their characteristics and capabilities.

The ACNC reported that, in another exercise, North Korean troops simulated the explosion of an artillery projectile at a pre-established altitude, but did not clarify whether the test sought to simulate the detonation of a nuclear weapon on an enemy target.

Kim described the 600mm multiple rocket launchers as key pieces of his arsenal that could destroy Seoul in the event of war on the Korean Peninsula.

”(Kim) said it is necessary to further instill in enemies that if an armed conflict and war breaks out, they will never be able to avoid the disastrous consequences,” the agency added. The leader asked his army to carry out “more conscientiously its missions of blocking and nullifying the possibility of a war with constant perfect preparation to collapse the enemy’s capital and the structure of its military forces.”

According to Lee, the South Korean military spokesman, Seoul and Washington have been strengthening their response capabilities against Pyongyang’s growing nuclear threats.

The North Korean tests came days after the end of the last combined maneuvers between the South Korean and US armies, which the North describes as rehearsals for an invasion. It was unclear whether Pyongyang timed its rehearsals to coincide with the visit to Seoul by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on Monday attended a summit on democracy and discussed the threat from the neighboring country with local officials.

Tensions on the peninsula have been rising since 2022, when Kim used the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a distraction to accelerate his tests of missiles and other weapons. The United States and South Korea responded by expanding their joint exercises and trilateral maneuvers, in which Japan participates, and updating their deterrence strategies built around American strategic assets.

There are fears that Pyongyang could raise the pressure even further in an election year in the United States and South Korea.

In a fiery speech to parliament in January, Kim declared that the country was abandoning the long-standing goal of seeking peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula and ordered a rewrite of the Constitution to present South Korea as its “unchanging main enemy.” According to the president, the new Magna Carta must specify that, if another war breaks out, the South will be annexed and subjugated.

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Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed to this report.