North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un Orders Military to Accelerate War Preparations

JAKARTA - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered the country's military, munitions industry, and nuclear weapons sector to speed up preparations for war, to counter what he calls unprecedented confrontational actions by the United States, state media said on Thursday.

Speaking about policy direction for the new year at a meeting of the country's ruling party on Wednesday, Leader Kim also said Pyongyang would expand strategic cooperation with "independent anti-imperialist" countries, the KCNA news agency reported.

"He (Leader Kim) assigned militant tasks to the People's Army and the ammunition industry, nuclear weapons, and civil defense sectors to further accelerate war preparations," the report said, reported by Reuters, December 28.

Leader Kim also laid out economic goals for the new year at the meeting, calling it a "decisive year" for achieving his country's five-year development plan, the report said.

"He clarified important tasks in the new year that must be dynamically driven in key industrial sectors" and called for "stabilization of agricultural production at a high level."

North Korea is known to have experienced severe food shortages in recent decades, including famines in the 1990s, often caused by natural disasters. International experts have warned that border closures during the COVID-19 pandemic are worsening food security.

North Korea's harvest is expected to increase year-on-year in 2023 due to favorable weather conditions. However, a Seoul official said the amount was still far below the amount needed to address the country's chronic food shortages.

The 9th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Korean Workers' Party kicked off on Tuesday to close out a year in which isolated North Korea enshrined a nuclear policy in its constitution, launched a spy satellite, and fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile.