Kim Jong Un announces construction of 10,000-ton warship

In a move to bolster its military might, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has announced the construction of a larger warship and the arming of its navy with nuclear weapons. The French news agency AFP confirmed the news on Wednesday (June 24) citing state media.
Kim made the announcement while addressing the official commissioning ceremony of the 5,000-ton class multipurpose destroyer ‘Cho Hyon’ in the North Korean port city of Nampo on Tuesday (June 23). The Cho Hyon is one of two 5,000-ton class warships built by North Korea last year. The warship is equipped with very powerful weapons. Kim himself supervised a cruise missile test from the ship last April.
At the commissioning ceremony, Kim Jong Un said that the program to arm the navy with nuclear weapons was proceeding perfectly according to their pre-planned path. The move is strategically crucial to keep the country’s nuclear force ready for ever-versatile and effective operations.
According to an English report by state news agency KCNA, Kim Jong Un announced that another warship, the Kang Kon, would soon be ready for operations. Pyongyang plans to launch a series of 10,000-ton strategic warships into the sea. Kim also said that from now on, North Korea will build two surface ships larger than the Cho Hyon every year, one of which will be a 10,000-ton cruiser.
Typically, a 10,000-ton class warship—such as the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke or South Korea’s Sejong the Great—is about 150 to 170 meters (about 492-557 feet) long, about the size of one and a half football fields, and weighs as much as thousands of cars. South Korea’s navy currently has more than 10 warships larger than 5,000 tons, while North Korea has only two.
Choi Gi-il, a professor at the Department of Military Studies at Sangji University, believes that the 10,000-ton milestone is a major symbolic event for North Korea. Through this, Pyongyang is expressing its determination not to lag behind Seoul’s naval power in any way.
On the other hand, Lim Yul-chul, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University, said that the main goal of the move is to send a message to South Korea’s main security ally, the United States. If North Korea deploys cruise missile carriers equipped with strategic nuclear warheads, it will greatly increase the defense costs and risks of South Korea and the US military.
Pyongyang has been claiming that its nuclear program is an essential defense measure in response to military activities by the United States and South Korea. North Korea has declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state after Kim Jong Un’s summit with then-US President Donald Trump in Hanoi in 2019 failed to lift sanctions and disarm.
The two neighbors are still effectively at war, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a temporary armistice rather than a permanent peace treaty. And there are currently about 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea to defend Seoul.

Source: Geo TV.