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Kim Jong Un Calls for Stronger North Korea Nuclear Deterrent

N. Korea’s Kim Chairs Meeting, Discusses Nuclear Plans: KCNA

(Bloomberg) -- North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, making his first public statement in three weeks, ordered military leaders to increase the country’s “nuclear war deterrence,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported Sunday.

The meeting of the Seventh Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea also discussed putting the nation’s strategic armed forces on high alert, and increasing the standing army’s firepower.

Kim spoke of the need to fix “unreasonable machinery and compositional defects” of the military, adding that the issue made it harder for the organization to better defend itself from “foreign forces,” according to KCNA.

State media also released photos of Kim purportedly at the meeting, including one of him standing in front of a presentation board with a long white pointer held toward what looks like a blurred out, black-and-white photo.

The report is the first apparent confirmation of Kim’s activities since he was photographed at a May Day ceremony opening a fertilizer plant. On April 11, he chaired a meeting of the party’s central committee.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.