SEOUL, August 5. /TASS/. The DPRK State Affairs President Kim Jong Un has pointed to "the rapidly-changing global security environment and the reckless expansion of the US-led military bloc system" and the structural shifts in the security situation around his country, the Korean Central News Agency reports.
Kim was speaking at a ceremony of transferring and receiving 250 new-type tactical ballistic missile systems on August 4.
"As the relationship of the US-led alliance is, in terms of its nature and character, evolving into a nuclear-based military bloc, the military security environment surrounding the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is facing drastic changes, both strategically and structurally," Kim said.
Over the past five years, he stated, the concept of nuclear has been associated with every military action targeting the DPRK taken by the United States.
"Now its vassal states have grown reckless enough to share its nukes," he pointed out. "This situation demands that we keep accelerating the development of our Republic's armed forces for maintaining their supremacy, and also of the self-reliant defense industry that provides solid support to this end."
In July, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., South Korean and US presidents Yoon Suk-yeol and Joe Biden signed a document on common principles in the field of nuclear deterrence. The Republic of Korea-US Nuclear Consultative Group has been operating since 2023. Seoul says it has been discussing proposals to integrate US nuclear capabilities and the Republic of Korea's "advanced conventional weapons" to deter the DPRK. Pyongyang assesses the group's activities critically, believing that it is discussing plans for a nuclear war with the DPRK.