Seoul, August 20: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for a rapid expansion of his country’s nuclear arsenal, denouncing ongoing U.S.-South Korea military drills as a clear signal of hostile intent, state media KCNA reported on Wednesday.
Kim said the exercises, which began earlier this week under the name Ulchi Freedom Shield, represented “an obvious expression of their will to provoke war” and accused Washington and Seoul of pursuing “the most hostile and confrontational” posture toward Pyongyang.
The annual 11-day drills, similar in scale to last year but rescheduled to push half of the field training events into September, are designed to bolster responses to North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile threats, South Korea’s military has said. The allies maintain the exercises are defensive in nature, rejecting Pyongyang’s long-standing criticism that they serve as invasion rehearsals.
Kim claimed the inclusion of what he described as a “nuclear element” in the drills underscored the need for his country to “rapidly expand” its nuclear armament to meet what he called an increasingly unstable security environment.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has said he hopes to ease tensions with the North, but analysts remain skeptical, pointing to Pyongyang’s pattern of responding to allied exercises with weapons tests or fiery rhetoric.
The comments mark the latest in a series of warnings from North Korea, which has accelerated its weapons development since denuclearisation talks with Washington stalled in 2019.
