Kim Jong Un calls for more ´weapon-grade nuclear materials´

North Korean leader calls for his country to expand production of “weapon-grade nuclear materials” and build more powerful weapons, state media reported Tuesday.

This latest threat from Kim, an expansion on an earlier promise to ramp up nuclear weapons production “exponentially”, came ahead of a US Navy carrier strike group’s scheduled arrival in South Korea on Tuesday.

Kim met with officials from North Korea´s nuclear weapons institute, the official Korean Central News Agency reported, and said that the country should prepare to use its nukes “anytime and anywhere”.

He called on officials to “expand on a far-sighted way the production of weapon-grade nuclear materials for thoroughly implementing the plan… on increasing nuclear arsenals exponentially.”

When North Korea has “flawlessly” prepared its nuclear weapons capability then “the enemy would fear us and not dare provoke our state sovereignty, system and people”, Kim said, according to the report.

North Korea is also planning to diversify its nuclear weapons delivery mechanisms, and on Tuesday March 28 claimed to have run a second successful test of its underwater nuclear attack drone.

This new weapon called Haeil (which means tsunami in Korean) was tested last week in what North Korea said was in response to  US-South Korea military exercises in recent weeks, the largest in scale in five years.

Haeil manoeuvred underwater “for 41 hours and 27 minutes tracking a simulated route spanning 600 kilometres” before exploding a target off North Hamgyong province early Monday, KCNA said in a separate report.

Russia has allegedly also developed a similar weapon, the nuclear-capable Poseidon torpedo, but mastering the complex technology required for using such weaponry might yet be beyond North Korea, experts have said.

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