Kim also ordered the North Korean military to increase its readiness near the western maritime border with South Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test of new surface-to-sea missiles, according to state media, while ordering his military to strengthen its readiness in disputed waters north of the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong.
The Korean Central News Agency's (KCNA) report on the launches on Thursday came a day after South Korea's military said North Korea had fired multiple cruise missiles into waters off its eastern port of Wonsan. The test was Pyongyang's sixth missile launch of the year.
The KCNA report said Kim supervised the “firing test of the new type of Padasuri-6 surface-to-sea missile to be equipped by the navy” and expressed “great satisfaction with the test results.”
The missiles reached their intended targets after flying over the East Sea for 1,400 seconds, he said. The East Sea is known internationally as the Sea of Japan.
Kim also accused South Korea of frequently violating his country's sovereignty by insisting on a “Northern Limit Line” (NLL), the maritime demarcation line between the two Koreas, and conducting maritime patrols and interdiction of third-party ships, according to The report. KCNA. The North Korean leader also ordered his military to strengthen preparations for him in the waters north of Yeonpyeong Island and west of the Korean Peninsula, in the LNL region.
The waters near the NLL, which was laid out by the U.S.-led United Nations Command at the end of the Korean War in 1953, have been the scene of previous clashes between the two Koreas. In 2010, North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors, and fired a barrage of artillery shells at Yeonpyeong Island, killing four others.
According to KCNA, Kim referred to the de facto border as “a phantom border without any basis in light of international law.”
“No matter how many lines there are in [North Korea’s] western sea, and what is clear is that if the enemy violates what we consider our maritime border lines, we will take it as a violation of our sovereignty and an armed provocation,” he said.
Kim also vowed that Pyongyang “will thoroughly defend our maritime sovereignty through force of arms and actions, not through any rhetoric.”
Earlier this year, the North Korean leader told his country's parliament that he would no longer recognize the LNL and declared that Pyongyang was abandoning its long-standing goal of reconciliation with Seoul. He also said that if South Korea “violates even 0.001 millimeters of our land, air and territorial waters, it will be considered a provocation of war.”
In a separate report, KCNA said Kim also inspected a “major” ammunition factory and learned in detail about the modernization of production.
During the visit, he highlighted the factory's role in strengthening North Korea's armed forces and set tasks to improve the quality of ammunition and increase production as “required by the prevailing situation and the developing revolution,” KCNA said.
Kim's visit to the munitions factory comes as the United States and its allies accuse North Korea of trading arms with Russia.
The White House said last month that Russia had recently used short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) from North Korea to carry out attacks against Ukraine, citing recently declassified intelligence.
