Kim Jong Un has threatened to bolster North Korea’s nuclear war deterrence and hosted a military meeting to discuss new policies to bolster the country’s nuclear capabilities amid stalled talks with Washington on how to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
The meeting of the powerful Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party marked Kim’s first public appearance in three weeks. He had made an unusually small number of outings in the past two months amid concerns of the ravaging global pandemic.
According to state media KCNA report, North Korea has imposed strict measures to check the pandemic although it says it has no confirmed cases. This follows intense speculation about Kim’s health last month after he missed a key anniversary.
KCNA said: “U.S.-led negotiations aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes have made little progress since late last year, especially after a global battle on the pandemic began.
“The meeting discussed measures to bolster armed forces and “reliably contain the persistent big or small military threats from the hostile forces.”
“Set forth at the meeting were new policies for further increasing the nuclear war deterrence of the country and putting the strategic armed forces on a high alert operation.
“Taken at the meeting were crucial measures for considerably increasing the firepower strike ability of the artillery pieces.”
However, the China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, expressed hope that the two country’s could resume meaningful dialogue as soon as possible.
In a media briefing, Wang said: “We hope that all parties, including the United States, would seriously consider it, and not squander away the hard-earned results of (previous) engagement.”
