North Korea plans to deploy a new type of artillery along its southern border, state media reported yesterday, potentially putting Seoul within striking range as Pyongyang deepens its hostility toward South Korea.
Despite peace overtures from the South Korean government, North Korea has repeatedly cast Seoul as its main adversary and has removed longstanding references to Korean unification from its constitution.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited a munitions factory this week to review production of a new “155-millimeter self-propelled gun-howitzer,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
Photo AFP / KCNA VIA KNS
The weapon has a range exceeding 60km and is to be deployed this year to a long-range artillery unit along the border with South Korea, KCNA said.
Central Seoul lies about 50km to 60km from the frontier, and much of Gyeonggi Province — South Korea’s most populous, home to key industrial hubs — would also fall within range.
The howitzer would “provide significant changes and advantages to our military’s ground operations,” KCNA reported Kim as saying.
North and South Korea remain technically at war because their 1950 to 1953 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Pyongyang has blown up roads and railways linking it with South Korea, and purportedly built barriers near the border.
In another sign of its hardening stance, North Korea deleted all references to uniting the divided peninsula from its constitution, a review of the latest version this week showed.
The document no longer contains a clause saying Pyongyang seeks “the reunification of the homeland,” and includes a new one defining North Korea’s territory as extending northward to China and Russia, and southward to the “Republic of Korea,” South Korea’s official name.
The South Korean Presidential Office on Thursday said that it would continue to pursue peace efforts with North Korea.
In a separate report, KCNA said Kim also visited the 5,000-tonne destroyer Choe Hyon on Thursday to oversee handling tests ahead of its formal deployment.
North Korea has staged strategic cruise missile launches from the destroyer, which analysts believe could be equipped to carry nuclear warheads.
Kim voiced satisfaction with the vessel’s progress and instructed officials to hand it over to the navy by the middle of next month as planned, KCNA said.
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