Kim Jong-un promises that North Korea will possess the most powerful nuclear arsenal.
State media said on Sunday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made the statement as he attended a ceremony to commemorate the launch of his nation’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). He was joined by his young daughter.
Just days after Pyongyang test-fired the Hwasong-17 in one of its most potent launches yet, Kim also gave promotions to more than 100 officials and scientists for their work on the weapon, which analysts have called the “monster missile” and are thought to be capable of hitting the US mainland.
According to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim praised the new ICBM as “the world’s strongest strategic weapon” and said that North Korean scientists had achieved “a magnificent leap forward in the development of the technique of putting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.”
In his order promoting the officials, Kim was quoted as saying that developing a nuclear force to defend the sovereignty and honor of the nation and its citizens “is the greatest and most important revolutionary cause, and its ultimate goal is to possess the world’s most potent strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in the century.”
He said that Pyongyang’s “aim of establishing the world’s strongest army” had been made clear to the world by the top leaders and scientists.
More than a dozen images of Kim from the photo shoot with his “loving daughter,” who made her public debut at the ICBM launch last week, were published in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper.
Experts stated that the news from last week was the first formal confirmation that Kim had a daughter since up until that point, North Korean state media had not made any mention of Kim’s children.
The pictures showed the daughter, who is said to be Kim’s second kid and whose name is Ju Ae, holding hands with her father and posing in front of the enormous rocket surrounded by uniformed troops. The youngster was wearing a black coat with a fur collar.
The daughter’s appearance, according to Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, was intended to represent Hwasong-17 as “the guardian of the next generation.”
He continued, saying, “It appears that he will continue to showcase his daughter at various events and utilize her as a tool for propaganda.”
The latest in a record-breaking flurry of missile launches by Pyongyang was an intercontinental ballistic missile test on November 18. Officials and analysts in Seoul and Washington warned that this flurry might lead to a seventh nuclear test by North Korea, which last conducted one in 2017.
