North Korea’s Kim Jong-un held a key political conference after the United States deployed a nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying about 150 Tomahawk missiles to South Korea on Friday.
State media reported the leader discussed reviewing defence strategies in the face of growing tensions with rivals and improving its struggling economy.
It came a day after North Korea resumed missile tests which it has ramped up to a record pace in recent months.
During Kim Jong-un’s first day of meetings on Friday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said party officials reviewed the country’s economic campaigns for the first half of 2023, and discussed foreign policy and defence strategies to “cope with the changed international situation”.
The KCNA didn’t specify what was discussed or mention any comments made by Kim. It said the meeting will continue for at least another day.
The USS Michigan’s arrival in South Korea, the first of its kind in six years, is part of a recent bilateral agreement on enhancing “regular visibility” of US strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear program, according to South Korean officials.
In a statement, they said with the deployment navies of the US and South Korea are to conduct drills on boosting their special operation capabilities and joint ability to cope with growing North Korean aggression.
It said the US submarine arrived at the southeastern port city of Busan but didn’t say how long it would stay in South Korean waters.
Michigan is one of the biggest submarines in the world.
The Ohio-class guided-missile submarine’s Tomahawk missiles have a range of about 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) and are capable of launching special forces missions, according to the South Korean statement.
The South and America’s militaries have been expanding their exercises in reaction to North Korea’s provocative run of missile tests since last year.
North Korea has argued it was forced to ramp up testing activities to deal with its rivals’ expanded military drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal, but experts say the North ultimately aims to modernise its arsenal and increase its leverage in eventual diplomacy.
After their meeting in Washington earlier this year, President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol agreed that the United States would enhance the “regular visibility of strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula”.
Biden also stated that any North Korean nuclear attack on the US or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.
Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, slammed the Biden-Yoon summit agreements, saying they revealed the two countries’ “most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North. She threatened to further bolster her country’s nuclear forces.
On Thursday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast.
They were the North’s first weapons launches since it tried to put its first spy satellite into orbit in late May.
The launch failed as the rocket carrying the spy satellite crashed into the waters off the Korean Peninsula’s west coast.
South Korea’s Defence Ministry said on Friday that military search crews have salvaged what it believes is part of the crashed North Korean rocket. The ministry released photos of the white, metal cylinder, which some experts said would have been the rocket’s fuel tank.
