NKorea approves new front-line army duties
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doubled down on his nuclear arms buildup to overwhelm “hostile forces” at a key meeting where military leaders approved unspecified new operational duties for front-line army units.
Members of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Military Commission decided to supplement an “important military action plan” on the duties of front-line troops and further strengthen the country’s nuclear war deterrent, state media said Friday.
North Korea hasn’t specified the new operational duties for front-line army units, but analysts say the country could be planning to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons targeting rival South Korea along their tense border.
While North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that could reach the U.S. mainland gets much of the international attention, it is also developing a variety of nuclearcapable, short-range missiles that can target South Korea. Experts say its rhetoric around those missiles communicates a threat to proactively use them in warfare to blunt the stronger conventional forces of South Korea and the United States. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in the South to deter aggression from the North.
Kim during the military commission’s three-day meeting that ended Thursday called for his entire army to “go all out” in carrying out the plans to bolster the nation’s military muscle and consolidate “powerful self-defense capabilities for overwhelming any hostile forces and thus reliably protect the dignity of the great country.”
The commission’s members discussed ways to strengthen the party’s leadership over the entire armed forces and ratified plans for unspecified changes in “military organizational formations,” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
Some analysts say North Korea’s possible plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to front-line artillery units may require command-and-control changes as the country’s nuclear-capable weapons have so far been handled by the army’s strategic force.
State media reports of the meeting did not include any direct criticism toward Washington or Seoul amid a prolonged stalemate in nuclear negotiations.
The meeting came amid signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct its first nuclear test explosion since September 2017, when it claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear weapon that could be tipped on its intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Experts say North Korea may use its next nuclear test to claim it has acquired the ability to build a small nuclear warhead to fit its short-range missiles or other weapons it recently tested, including a purported hypersonic missile and a long-range cruise missile. Smaller warheads would also be necessary for the North’s stated pursuit of a multiwarhead ICBM.