North Korea’s Kim oversees test of multiple rocket launcher

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test-firing of a multiple rocket launcher, state media said yesterday, 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 “240mm 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. — AFP

— AFP photo Photo released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency via KNS shows a 240mm rocket from the National Defence Industrial Enterprises being test-fired at an undisclosed location in North Korea.