North Korean state media claimed on Thursday that dictator Kim Jong-un personally drove a new model tank to “stormy cheers of hurrah” during exercises to prepare for a land war, presumably with South Korea.
In Kim’s remarks at the event, which reportedly took place on Wednesday, Kim said that North Korea produced the “most powerful tanks in the world” and “expressed great satisfaction over the fact that the new-type main battle tank successfully demonstrated its very excellent striking power and maneuverability,” according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
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“He [Kim] said it is the fact to be proud of that the KPA is equipped with the most powerful tanks in the world,” KCNA asserted. “After reviewing the tank crews, [Kim] mounted a new-type main battle tank, seized the control lever and drove the tank himself, adding to the high militant spirit of the tankmen of our army and deeply instilling firm outlooks on the enemy and war into them.”
“All the officers and men of the tank units raised stormy cheers of hurrah, looking up to the invincible and iron-willed brilliant commander,” KCNA thundered.
KCNA published several photos of Kim allegedly driving a tank, greeting soldiers, and observing military exercises.
#BREAKING : Kim Jong-un personally tests a new tank during a mock battle.
— upuknews (@upuknews1) March 14, 2024
Kim and North Korea’s top military brass oversaw the military demonstration featuring a new М-2020 battle tank, according to state media KCNA.
He expressed "great satisfaction" with the tank's striking… pic.twitter.com/M0JZ4DCzzx
The South Korean newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily reported that outside experts believe the tanks in the photos to be “an upgraded version of a similar vehicle displayed for the first time during a military parade in Pyongyang in October 2020 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party.”
The display, an apparent attempt to intimidate South Korea from engaging in a land invasion, occurred alongside joint military operations between the South Korean and American armed forces, a regular set of exercises known as “Freedom Shield.” The South Korean Army announced similar tank drills on Thursday in what appeared to be a response to Pyongyang. According to the South Korean newswire service Yonhap, 300 members of the American and South Korean militaries participated in a field training that “mobilized the Army’s K1A2 tanks and K21 armored vehicles, among other assets, as well as M1150 assault breacher vehicles from a combined South Korea-U.S. engineering unit.”
U.S. soldiers walk past South Korean K1A2 tanks after a joint live fire exercise at a military training field in Pocheon on March 14, 2024, as part of the annual Freedom Shield joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States. (JUNG YEON-JE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
North Korea has increased the frequency of its military exercises and belligerent language in the past four years, responding both to the administration of American President Joe Biden and the ongoing tenure of conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol. Pyongyang began the year with a significant shift in the way in which it addressed South Korea in its official propaganda; previously referring to the country as “south [sic] Korea,” an attempt to indicate that Seoul’s government is not legitimate and the territory is legitimately part of a united, communist Korea, it finally accepted capitalizing the country’s name.
“It is the final conclusion drawn from the bitter history of the inter-Korean relations that we cannot go along the road of national restoration and reunification together,” Kim Jong-un declared in January. “We don’t want war, but we have no intention of avoiding it.”
Kim asserted that his military should prepare for “occupying, subjugating, and reclaiming” South Korea.
Kim also referred to South Korea by its formal name, the Republic of Korea.
“Saying that the historic time has come at last when we should define as a state most hostile toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea the entity called the Republic of Korea (ROK),” a report in KCNA published in January read, “which has pursued a history of vicious confrontation with bloodshot eyes to overthrow our regime … he stressed that our state should recognize this unavoidable and irrevocable reality as it is.”
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un speaks at the Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang, North Korea, on January 15, 2024. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
“The ROK scums are our principal enemy,” Kim reportedly said.
Later that month, North Korean media claimed that it now possessed a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone.
“The Underwater Weapon System Institute under the DPRK Academy of Defense Science conducted an important test of its underwater nuclear weapon system ‘Haeil-5-23’ under development in the East Sea of Korea,” KCNA reported. “Our army’s underwater nuke-based countering posture is being further rounded off and its various maritime and underwater responsive actions will continue to deter the hostile military maneuvers of the navies of the U.S. and its allies.”
That development was separate from the claims in September that North Korea now possessed an underwater nuclear submarine.
Despite the claims of advanced nuclear military technology, and years of conducting nuclear weapons tests, the South Korean government insisted on Thursday that it does not recognize North Korea as a nuclear power, in response to questions about growing cooperation between Pyongyang and the government of strongman Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
