Kim Jong Un, the Chairperson of the State Affairs Commission of North Korea, directly supervised long-range artillery and missile system joint strike training on the 8th. He said, "We must continuously enhance the pivotal role of nuclear forces in both war deterrence strategy and all aspects of war execution."
According to the Korean Central News Agency on the 9th, Kim, while overseeing the joint strike training of long-range artillery and missile systems by the Eastern Front troops the previous day, stated, "I presented important tasks to further enhance the combat reliability of tactical nuclear weapon systems and to continuously expand the operational space in a multifaceted way."
On that day, Kim's training was accompanied by senior officials from the central committee of the Workers' Party, including Chung Cheon, Cho Chun-ryong, and Kim Jung-sik, along with Jang Chang-ha, director of the missile industry department, and Kim Yong-hwan, director of the National Defense Science Research Institute.
This training aimed to familiarize the aforementioned units with the procedures for operating the artillery and missile attack systems based on the national nuclear weapon management system. The Korean Central News Agency reported that 600mm multiple rocket launchers and the tactical ballistic missile "Hwasong-11a" model were mobilized for this training.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense introduced the training as "sufficient measures showing our military's rapid response readiness and capability to cope with the military situation changes in sensitive areas heightened by enemies."
Kim noted while overseeing the training, "It is very important to continuously perfect the readiness of nuclear forces for regular combat. We must keep applying efforts to continuously enhance long-range precision strike capability and efficiency."
He added, "Strengthening our artillery, enhancing the combat power of the army, and reinforcing national defense are all part of our party's consistent military construction policy to prioritize strengthening the qualitative superiority of artillery forces."
According to the Korean Central News Agency, this training was reported to have checked the operational reliability of the 'nuclear trigger' system prior to artillery and missile firing. The nuclear trigger is a comprehensive management system for nuclear weapons that unifies the command for the use of nuclear weapons and the actual launch process, developed as reported in March 2023.
In this context, the Korean Central News Agency stated, "The reckless acts of escalating tensions by the United States and its allied countries, which have been continuously conducting nuclear operational exercises on the Korean Peninsula and in surrounding areas, are demanding rapid responsiveness and thorough battle readiness from our military," indicating that this training was a countermeasure against South Korea-U.S. and South Korea-U.S.-Japan military cooperation.
Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that North Korea fired several varieties of short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea the previous day in the area around Wonsan. North Korea is known to have mixed test-fired KN-23 (the North Korean version of the Iskander) and KN-25 (600mm super-large multiple rocket launcher).