YEMEN Press Agency

North Korea holds nuclear counterattack simulation drills

WORLD, March 20 (YPA) – North Korea said Monday it conducted drills simulating a tactical nuclear counterattack against its enemies over the weekend, as the United States and South Korea are staging their joint annual military exercise.

The North’s leader Kim Jong-un “guided” the training held Saturday and Sunday, including a ballistic missile launch drill designed to verify the operation of nuclear explosion control devices and detonators, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

Photos carried by state media showed his daughter Ju-ae also oversaw the drills.

He “stressed the need to let service personnel get familiar with any unexpected circumstances and make them more perfectly prepared in their active posture of making an immediate and overwhelming nuclear counterattack anytime,” the KCNA said in an English-language report.

Kim also presented the “important nuclear force-building orientation and the strategic tasks to be fulfilled in preparing the nuclear force for a war,” KCNA added.

He called on his country to be ready to launch a nuclear attack to deter war as he accused the US and South Korea of carrying out military drills with American nuclear assets.

E.M