North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un supervised military exercises with his daughter in which the country’s paratroopers participated and called for full preparations for war, state media said this Saturday.
”He stressed the need for all military personnel to be firmly armed with strong will against the enemy and deep combat vision to change history if a war breaks out,” the state agency KCNA said.
In the images shared by said source, Kim is seen with his daughter, whose age or name has not been revealed (although it is believed that she could be called Kim Ju-ae), both dressed in leather trench coats: black for the father and brown for the daughter.
The minor appears supervising the maneuvers with binoculars, in another example of the prominent role that the North Korean leader would like to give to his daughter and whose intention is still unknown.
The young woman appeared in state media for the first time on November 19, 2022, when she accompanied her father to witness the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The current exercises would be a response to the recent annual military exercises by South Korea and the United States that ended on Thursday after eleven days and that sought to strengthen military and deterrence capabilities against the North Korean threat.
The South Korean and U.S. militaries on Thursday announced the end of “Freedom Shield,” their traditional spring war games focused largely on computer simulations and command post exercises.
However, this year’s maneuvers, which began on March 4, included operations on land, sea and air and used as a basis situations in which the objective was “to respond to North Korean nuclear operations.”
That fictitious scenario mentioned “operations” but did not imply the use of nuclear weapons by Pyongyang per se, an assumption that is expected to be present in the large combined drills that Seoul and Washington will carry out in the summer.
To culminate “Freedom Shield” this year, the South Korean army carried out live-fire exercises today in Pocheon, about 25 kilometers south of the border with the North, in which a mechanized infantry division participated together with a Korean combined engineering unit. South-U.S.
About 300 troops took part in the drill, which involved K1A2 tanks, K21 armored vehicles, K30 Biho self-propelled artillery or M60 armored bridge launchers.
North Korean response
Pyongyang, which considers these annual spring exercises as a rehearsal to invade its territory, has responded, with the active participation of Kim Jong-un, with its own drills since “Freedom Shield” began 11 days ago.
First, Kim visited a training base on the western flank last week where he urged his army to “intensify” its military maneuvers, in order “to obtain a victory in a real war.”
Days later, the North Korean leader himself directed some artillery tests with live fire and sent a provocative message to the South, indicating that a border unit that has Seoul “in its firing range” participated in this drill.
The North Korean army is believed to have long-range artillery units located near the western flank of the inter-Korean border that would technically have the capacity to reach points in the southern capital.
Just a few hours later, the South Korean Air Force responded by parading, for the first time, all the combat fighter models it has operational.
During the event, the southern army recalled that it has a rapid response air squadron for the first line of combat in charge of defending the Seoul metropolitan area which, in the event of an attack, has the mission of supporting the destruction of the aforementioned North Korean batteries.
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