SEOUL: North Korea said on Friday (Mar 21) it had test-fired a new weapons system which would boost its combat readiness, as Russia’s security chief held talks in Pyongyang with leader Kim Jong Un.
Traditional allies Russia and North Korea have drawn closer since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Seoul accusing Kim of sending thousands of troops and container loads of weapons to help Moscow fight Kyiv.
Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang has officially confirmed the troop deployment, but the two countries signed a sweeping military deal last year, including a mutual defence clause, when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to the nuclear-armed North.
Moscow’s top security official Sergei Shoigu was visiting North Korea on Friday, Russian news agency TASS reported, the latest in a recent series of high-level exchanges between North Korea and Russia.
Shoigu passed on “greetings and best wishes” from Putin to Kim in a meeting with the North Korean leader.
He also hailed a strategic partnership treaty that includes mutual defence components, signed and ratified last year, as “fully meeting the interests of both countries”.
Kim oversaw the test-fire of the country’s latest anti-aircraft missile system, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Friday, without specifying when the test happened.
Kim said it showed North Korea’s army would be “equipped with another major defence weapon system with laudable combat performance”, KCNA said.
The announcement came a day after South Korea wrapped up a major annual joint military exercise with the United States, known as Freedom Shield, which Pyongyang separately denounced on Friday as “a rehearsal of war of aggression”.
The North – which attacked its neighbour in 1950, triggering the Korean War – has long been infuriated by any military exercises between the US and the South.
Seoul said last week the North had fired “multiple unidentified ballistic missiles” after it began the joint drills, which involve US soldiers stationed in South Korea.
Pyongyang also carried out a test-launch of strategic cruise missiles in the Yellow Sea in late February, which it said showed off “counterattack capabilities”.
The most recent Freedom Shield exercise featured a collaborative drill focused on countering weapons of mass destruction, specifically targeting nuclear, chemical, biological and radioactive threats.
Relations between Pyongyang and Seoul have been at one of their lowest points in years, with the North launching a flurry of ballistic missiles last year in violation of UN sanctions.
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