North Korea has unveiled a new warship it claims is a destroyer armed with the “most powerful weapons” at a launch ceremony attended by leader Kim Jong Un, state media said Saturday.
The announcement comes about a month after Kim oversaw the test of new suicide and reconnaissance drones featuring AI technology, adding to concerns over North Korea’s deepening military cooperation with Moscow.
The warship, named “Choe Hyon” after a deceased North Korean anti-Japanese fighter, is a 5,000-ton destroyer-class vessel that took more than a year to build, according to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.
Given its size, experts believe the ship can carry both ship-to-surface and ship-to-air missiles, with specialist outlet NK News reporting it is “likely to be equipped with short-range tactical nuclear missiles.”
The North Korean navy can now serve as a “core service for national defence and a component of nuclear war deterrent”, Kim said, according to KCNA, adding that the ship will “enter into operation early next year.”
He also accused Washington of “conducting aggressive exercises that simulate nuclear strikes against” the North through its joint-military operations with the South.
At the launch ceremony, held at the Nampho Dockyard on the country’s west coast Friday, the warship “received the honour of being first reviewed” by Kim, it added.
Nuclear Weapons State
Images released by state media showed Kim, accompanied by his daughter Ju Ae, being enthusiastically welcomed by navy personnel in white uniforms in front of the new warship, with colourful confetti scattered across the ground.
Ju Ae, who is considered by many experts as Kim’s likely successor, was also photographed whispering to her father dressed in a formal black suit in front of the vessel.
Kim inspected a project in March to build a nuclear-powered submarine, asserting that “radically” boosting the navy was a key part of Pyongyang’s defensive strategy.
At the time, Kim called for modernizing the country’s surface and underwater naval forces, including the development of warships.
Washington — Seoul’s key security ally — has in recent years ramped up joint military exercises and increased the presence of strategic US assets, such as an aircraft carrier and a nuclear-powered submarine, around the Korean Peninsula to deter the North.
Pyongyang has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear weapons state and routinely denounces joint US-South Korea drills as rehearsals for invasion.
US President Donald Trump, who met Kim three times during his first administration, said this month that he is in “communication” with Kim and intends to “do something at some point,” according to Seoul’s Yonhap news agency.
A summit between the two in Hanoi collapsed in 2019 over talks on sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would be willing to give up in return.
The launch of the vessel appears to “contain the intention to reiterate the position that nuclear abandonment is not possible for Kim”, Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.
Kim also appears to be “presenting preconditions for possible future North Korea-US negotiations,” Yang added.
