Top DPRK leader vows to enhance war response posture

The top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) vowed on Saturday to bolster war response posture to cope with any security situation during his visit to the Ministry of National Defense marking Day of Army Founding, state media said on Sunday.

In his speech commemorating the 77th founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army, Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the DPRK, noted the need to improve the war response posture of the country's armed forces to confront security challenges, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

Kim pointed out that the U.S. constant deployment of nuclear strategic means on the Korean peninsula, the U.S.-led bilateral and multiple nuclear war simulation exercises, its trilateral military alliance with South Korea and Japan, and the formation of the Asian version of NATO are inviting military imbalance on the peninsula and in Northeast Asia, and posing a grave challenge to his country's security, the KCNA report said.

The DPRK does not want unnecessary escalation of the regional situation "but will take sustained countermeasures to ensure the regional military balance out of the aspiration for preventing the outbreak of a new war and ensuring peace and security on the Korean Peninsula," he was quoted as saying by the KCNA.

Referring to a series of new plans for rapidly bolstering all deterrences including nuclear forces, Kim clarified once again the unshakable policy of more highly developing the nuclear forces, the KCNA report said.

He expressed serious concern over the "reckless behaviors of the U.S. and Western group intentionally fostering the prolonged war from the unrealizable dream to deal strategic setbacks to Russia," adding the army and people of the DPRK will "invariably support and encourage the just cause of the Russian army and people to defend their sovereignty, security and territorial integrity in keeping with the spirit of the treaty on the comprehensive strategic partnership between the DPRK and Russia," said the report.