Kim visited a factory that makes sniper rifles, using one for target practice, and a factory that apparently produces material for the country’s new 240-millimeter multiple rocket launcher system, according to an article and published photographs by the KCNA agency.
The North Korean leader also personally drove one of the system’s launchers, which the regime tested on Friday, for the third time this year, before announcing that it will start using it later this year.
During the visits, the North Korean leader spoke about automation, rationalization and modernization of production processes and the importance of mass production, noting that North Korean weapons factories currently have “world-class technical capabilities”.
“The considerable global progress currently achieved by the arms industry is a product of the integrity and vitality of the Party’s strategy for the economic development of the national defense industry,” said Kim, according to KCNA.
Kim “urged all defense industrial enterprises under the Second Economic Commission to undertake a campaign to establish a culture of life and production, and to continue to establish and improve the exemplary culture of the new century for the working class of the munitions industry ”.
The Second Economic Commission is a key body in North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction development programs.
Analysts’ attention is directed to this new entity in the North Korean defense industry at a time when Pyongyang continues to supply Moscow with containers of weapons, including artillery and short-range ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine, according to the EFE news agency.
There are also increasing signs that the armed wing of Hamas and the Iranian regime have also obtained North Korean weapons, EFE wrote.
*With Lusa
