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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called on senior military officials to strengthen front-line units and turn the southern border into an “impregnable fortress,” state media reported on Monday.
Kim gave the instructions during a meeting on Sunday with commanding military officers, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
A photo released by KCNA showed Kim presiding over the meeting as military officers wore full dress uniforms.
Kim told military officials that a “great change” would be made to deter war.
He also said 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 deter war more thoroughly,” KCNA reported.
He also spoke about the ruling party’s “policy of territorial defense on strengthening the first-line units on the southern border and turning the border line into an impregnable fortress.”
The plans come at a low point in relations with South Korea, with Pyongyang unresponsive to repeated offers for dialogue from Seoul.
The meeting took place the same day North Korea’s women’s football team arrived in South Korea, the first such visit in eight years, raising hopes of a slight thaw in relations.
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Kim said projects to modernize the military “should be stepped up to newly define the concept of operations in all spheres,” according to KCNA.
Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said the instructions reflected lessons learned from Russia’s war against Ukraine, where 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,” Hong told AFP.
Kim’s plans also “suggest a multi-domain operational concept extending beyond land, sea and air to include underwater, space, electronic and cyber domains,” he said.
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