JAKARTA - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country needed to expand its nuclear arsenal immediately. North Korea calls the US-South Korea military exercise a provocation of war.
South Korea and its ally, the United States, started joint military exercises this week, including testing an enhanced response to North Korea's growing nuclear threat.
Pyongyang criticized such exercises as training for an invasion and sometimes responded with weapons tests, but Seoul and Washington said the drills were purely defensive.
The 11-day annual exercise, called Ulchi Freedom Shield, will be on a similar scale to 2024 but is adjusted to the rescheduling of 20 out of 40 field training events in September, the South Korean military said.
The delay comes as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said his desire to ease tensions with North Korea, although analysts are skeptical of Pyongyang's response.
The exercise is a clear expression of their intention to remain the most hostile and confrontational attitude towards North Korea, Kim said while visiting a naval destroyer on Monday, according to an English translation of his statement at KCNA.
He said the security environment required North Korea to expand rapidly its nuclear arsenal.
The United States' efforts and its allies to tackle the development of North Korea's nuclear weapons are expected to be discussed at a upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in Washington.
"Through this move, North Korea has shown its refusal to accept denuclearization and its desire to permanently upgrade nuclear weapons," said Hong Min, North Korean analyst at the Korean Institute for National Unification.
A report by the American Federation of Scientists last year concluded that although North Korea may have produced enough fission material to build up to 90 nuclear warheads. The report said North Korea was suspected of assembling close to 50.
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