North Korea’s Kim calls for rapid nuclear buildup amid US-South Korea exercises

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says his country needs to rapidly expand its nuclear armament and calls US-South Korea military exercises an “obvious expression of their will to provoke war,” state media KCNA reports.

South Korea and its ally the United States kicked off joint military drills this week, including testing an upgraded response to heightened North Korean nuclear threats.

Pyongyang regularly criticizes such drills as rehearsals for invasion and sometimes responds with weapons tests, but Seoul and Washington say they are purely defensive.

The 11-day annual exercises, called Ulchi Freedom Shield, will be on a similar scale to 2024 but adjusted by rescheduling 20 out of 40 field training events to September, South Korea’s military said earlier. Those delays come as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung says he wants to ease tensions with North Korea, though analysts are skeptical about Pyongyang’s response.

The exercises are a “clear expression of … their intention to remain most hostile and confrontational” to North Korea, Kim says, according to KCNA’s English translation of his remarks.

He says the security environment requires the North to “rapidly expand” its nuclear armament, noting that recent US-South Korea exercises involved a “nuclear element.”