Seoul, March 8 The top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) called for bolstering up the navy's combat power while inspecting the country's major shipyards, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Saturday.
The basic orientation for radically bolstering up the navy's combat power is "to simultaneously push forward with the modernization of water-surface and underwater warships and the further improvement of their operational capabilities," Kim Jong Un, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and President of the State Affairs of the DPRK, was quoted as saying.
He stressed the need to decisively enhance the warship-building capacity on the basis of the existing experience and technology and "put spurs to the improvement of overall technical processes," in a bid to build a large number of modern warships of different missions desired by the naval force.
Kim also learned about the building of a nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine, Xinhua news agency reported.
The DPRK would "never remain an idle onlooker to the naval and underwater military activities of the enemies," he said, adding that the DPRK will "reliably defend the maritime sovereignty and firmly ensure a security guarantee on the Korean Peninsula and in the region through the important innovations and changes of its naval force and the upper hand in the ever-evolving strength."
The KCNA report did not specify when Kim visited the shipyards.
Last week, the North Korean armed forces conducted a launching drill of strategic cruise missile in waters off its west coast.
The Korean People's Army (KPA) fired two strategic cruise missiles, which travelled 1587 km before hitting target, KCNA said.
The purpose of the launching drill is to inform the "enemies of the KPA's counterattack capability in any space and the readiness of its various nuke operation means, and to demonstrate the reliability of the state nuclear deterrence and make the strategic cruise missile subunits get adept in fulfilling their sudden firing mission," said the report.
It was reported that Kim Jong Un oversaw the launching drill, saying that "it is a responsible exercise of the DPRK's war deterrence to continuously test the reliability and operation of the components of its nuclear deterrence and demonstrate their might."
"It is the responsible mission and duty of the DPRK's nuclear armed forces to permanently defend the national sovereignty and security with the reliable nuclear shield by getting more thorough battle readiness of nuclear force and full preparedness for their use," Kim added.
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