North Korea said Wednesday leader Kim Jong Un observed the test-firings of missiles from a recently launched destroyer \u2014 the first such warship for the North \u2014 and called for accelerating efforts to boost his navy’s nuclear attack capabilities.
\nNorth Korea last week unveiled the 5,000-ton destroyer equipped with what it called the most powerful weapons systems built for a navy vessel. During Friday’s launching ceremony at the western port of Nampo, Kim called the ship’s construction \u201ca breakthrough\u201d in modernizing North Korea’s naval forces, The Associated Press reported.
\nOutside experts say it’s North Korea’s first destroyer and that it was likely built with Russian assistance. They say North Korea’s naval forces lag behind South Korea’s but still view the destroyer as a serious security threat as it could bolster North Korea’s attack and defense capabilities.
\nThe official Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday that Kim watched the tests of the destroyer’s supersonic and strategic cruise missiles, anti-aircraft missile, automatic guns and electronic jamming guns earlier this week.
\nHe appreciated the ship’s combination of powerful strike weapons and conventional defenses and set tasks to speed the nuclear-arming of his navy, the report said.
\nDuring the ship’s launching ceremony, Kim said the destroyer will be deployed early next year. He said the acquisition of a nuclear-powered submarine would be his next big step in strengthening his navy. He underscored the need to beef up North Korea’s deterrence capability to cope with what he called escalating US-led hostilities targeting the North.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea said Wednesday leader Kim Jong Un observed the test-firings of missiles from a recently launched destroyer \u2014 the first such warship for the North \u2014 and called for accelerating efforts to boost his navy’s nuclear attack capabilities. North Korea last week unveiled the 5,000-ton destroyer equipped with what it called the most powerful …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47563,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47562\/revisions\/47563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}