North Korean leader oversees test-firing of multiple rocket launcher

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un oversaw the testfiring of a multiple rocket launcher, state media said on Friday, its latest weapons test after accusations Pyongyang has supplied arms to Russia.

The largely isolated country has recently bolstered military ties with Russia, and Pyongyang thanked Moscow this month for its UN Security Council veto blocking the renewal of a panel of UN experts that monitored international weapons sanctions on Kim’s government.

South Korea and the United States accuse North Korea of supplying weapons to Russia, despite UN sanctions banning any such moves.

And analysts have said the nuclear-armed North could be testing and ramping up production of artillery and cruise missiles before sending them to Russia for use in Ukraine.

The “flight features, (and) hit and concentration indices” of the “240 mm shell of a multiple rocket launcher”, made at Pyongyang’s new defence industry unit, were “evaluated very satisfactorily” during the test, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Kim stressed “the need... to surely carry out the munitions production plan for this year in a qualitative way,” KCNA said.

The rocket launcher “with new technology would bring about a strategic change in bolstering up the artillery force” of the North’s army, Kim said, according to KCNA.

Earlier this week, Pyongyang said Kim had overseen the country’s first ever “nuclear trigger” drills, which involved simulating a nuclear counterattack as a warning to enemies.

Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said based on the Friday announcement, the North seems to have achieved “some progress” in integrating guidance technology for precision strikes targeting South Korea’s capital region.

“The entire country resembles a missile defence industry expo,” he told AFP.

Last year, North Korea conducted a record number of missile tests in defiance of UN sanctions in place since 2006 and despite warnings from Washington and Seoul.

Pyongyang declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear weapons state in 2022.

AFP “Rocket artillery” being launched during a nuclear counter-attack training exercise, at an undisclosed location in North Korea.