Kim Jong-un, chairperson of North Korea's State Affairs Commission, inspected a special operations unit on the 1st, the same day Lee Jae-myung and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, to discuss cooperation on Korean Peninsula issues.
The Korean Central News Agency reported on the 2nd that the chairperson visited the command of the Korean People's Army 11th Corps the previous day. The 11th Corps is North Korea's elite special operations unit known as the "Storm Corps." A substantial force was deployed last year to Russia's Kursk region, where it fought Ukrainian troops.
Kim Jong-un, wearing a black leather jumper, toured the unit's revolutionary history hall and said, "It is our party's will and desire to build the entire military into a strong army that will surely win and a hero army by fighting like this unit."
He then noted "the need to take military organizational and institutional measures to strengthen the pivotal core capability of the armed forces," saying the Central Military Commission of the Party will begin in earnest to review the issue of restructuring.
Kim Jong-un emphasized that "the fundamental factor that decides victory or defeat in war and battle is ideology." The agency said Kim Jong-un watched the fighters' training and expressed satisfaction with their readiness to defend sovereignty from the "most base and mean enemies in the world." He did not mention Korea or the United States directly.
North Korea issued a statement the previous day in the name of Vice Foreign Minister Pak Myong-ho, rejecting the South Korean presidential office's announcement that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was on the agenda at the South Korea–China summit as a "pipe dream."