North Korea tested a surface-to-sea missile on Wednesday with leader Kim Jong Un overseeing it, and fired multiple cruise missiles off its east coast in the same day.
The new missile, called Padasuri-6, or “Sea Eagle-6,” flew over the sea and hit its intended target, North Korean state media KCNA said.
Kim also visited a major munitions factory, where he called for a boost in weapons production and warned South Korea. He inspected the factory and learned in detail about the modernization of production, according to KCNA.
“It is not important how many lines exist in the West Sea of Korea … when the enemy intrudes into the maritime border recognized by us, we will regard it as an encroachment upon the sovereignty of the DPRK and an armed provocation against it,” Kim said, according to KCNA.
Kim said South Korea is violating the North’s sovereignty by insisting on a “Northern Limit Line” (NLL), the maritime demarcation line between the two Koreas, KCNA said.
The launching of the cruise missiles was the latest of multiple such tests in recent weeks before an April general election in South Korea.
Kim gave orders to strengthen military readiness in the waters north of Yeonpyeong Island and to the west of the Korean peninsula in the region of the NLL, KCNA said.
The leader of the reclusive state also stressed the factory’s role in bolstering North Korea’s armed forces and talked about increasing production as “required by the prevailing situation and the developing revolution,” KCNA said.
Kim’s visit to the munitions factory comes as the United States and its allies have accused North Korea of trading arms with Russia.
The White House last month said Russia had recently used short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) sourced from North Korea to conduct strikes against Ukraine, citing newly declassified intelligence.
There are growing concerns in South Korea about direct military provocation, and a possible area of conflict could be Korea’s poorly drawn western sea boundary, where several bloody skirmishes have occurred in past years.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson, Lee Sung Joon, said in a briefing Thursday that the South’s military would sternly respond to any provocation along the Northern Limit Line, which he described as “our military’s unchanging sea border.”
In early January, both countries fired artillery rounds near the western sea boundary in exchanges that caused no known damage.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
