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State media reported on Sunday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claims Pyongyang has deployed “special assets.”
This move is described as a direct response to what he characterises as the growing military presence of Washington in South Korea.
Speaking at the opening of a weapons exhibition in Pyongyang, Kim said the United States’ arms build-up and joint military exercises with South Korea and Japan had intensified tensions on the Korean peninsula.
The US currently stations around 28,500 troops in South Korea to deter potential aggression from the nuclear-armed North.
“The US-ROK nuclear alliance is making rapid progress, and they are conducting various kinds of exercises to execute dangerous scenarios,” Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“In direct proportion to the US military’s arms buildup in the ROK region, our strategic concern about this region has also grown, and accordingly, we have assigned our special assets to the major targets,” he said, without specifying the nature of these assets.
Kim added that he was “closely watching” military developments across the border and warned that the “enemy will have to worry” about future security shifts.
KCNA photos showed Kim inspecting various weapons, including missiles, alongside senior military officials at the exhibition.
The remarks come weeks after Kim signalled a conditional openness to renewed talks with Washington, recalling his “fond memories” of former US president Donald Trump but maintaining that North Korea would not surrender its nuclear arsenal.
Kim and Trump met three times between 2018 and 2019, but negotiations broke down in Hanoi over disagreements on the pace and scope of Pyongyang’s denuclearisation.
North Korea has since declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear power and continues to face heavy UN sanctions over its weapons programme.
