SEOUL – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called on top military officials to bolster front-line units and turn the southern border into an “impregnable fortress”, state media reported Monday.
Kim gave the instruction at a meeting on Sunday where a photo released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) showed him presiding over commanding military officers wearing full dress uniform.
The North Korea leader told the military officials that a “great change” would be made in an effort to deter war and that the commanding officers should raise their “outlook on the arch enemy”, an apparent reference to South Korea.
Kim “set forth plans for … strengthening the first-line units and other major units in military and technical aspects as an important decision to more thoroughly deter war”, the KCNA report said.
The plans, which experts say appeared informed by developments in Russia’s war with Ukraine, come at a low point in relations with South Korea and Pyongyang unresponsive to Seoul’s repeated offers for dialogue.
The meeting took place the same day the North Korean women’s football team landed in South Korea – the first such visit in eight years, which raised hopes of a slight thaw in frosty ties.
Kim also talked about the ruling party’s “policy of territorial defence on strengthening the first-line units in the southern border and turning the border line into an impregnable fortress”, according to KCNA.
Projects to modernise the military “should be stepped up to newly define the concept of operations in all spheres”, he was also quoted as saying.
Hong Min, a senior analyst at Korea Institute for National Unification, said the instructions reflected lessons learnt from Russia’s war against Ukraine, in which Pyongyang has supported Moscow by providing troops.
“This phrase reflects awareness of drone warfare, precision strikes, electronic warfare and multi-domain battlefields observed in the Ukraine war and Middle East conflicts,” he told AFP.
Kim’s plans also “suggests a multi-domain operational concept extending beyond land, sea and air to include underwater, space, electronic and cyber domains.”
