Kim Jong Un Sends Warning to West Amid US-South Korea Drills

North Korea has issued a stark warning to South Korea and the United States by carrying out large-scale artillery drills.

On March 4, the U.S. and South Korea began Freedom Shield, their annual joint military exercises, which will continue until March 14. During the exercises, North Korea began conducting large-scale artillery drills along its western coast.

As the Freedom Shield exercises continue, the international community watches closely, aware of the delicate balance of power and the potential for escalation in this historically volatile region.

A spokesperson for North Korea’s Ministry of National Defense said, “The large-scale war drills staged by the world’s biggest nuclear weapons state … in the Korean Peninsula, where a nuclear war may be ignited even with a spark, can never be called ‘defensive,'” reported Korean Central News Agency, a state media outlet.

North Korea’s drills featured a powerful display of long-range artillery capabilities to reinforce its stance that it has a formidable deterrent against perceived threats.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s aggressive military posture and readiness drills underscore the heightened state of alertness on the Korean peninsula.

Kim’s directive for the military to prepare for “merciless and rapid strikes” in the event of actual warfare reflects an escalating rhetoric and apparent readiness for confrontation.

The drills were initiated with “power demonstration strikes of long-range artillery divisions” situated along the border area, NK News, a specialist publication focusing on North Korea, reported Friday, citing the state media outlet Rodong Sinmun.

These divisions, tasked with a critical role as a war deterrent capable of targeting enemy capitals, executed the exercises to bolster their “combat mobilization readiness and ability to fight in an actual war,” Rodong Sinmun added, according to NK News.

Visuals accompanying the report showcased an array of launchers firing in unison toward the sea, indicating the scale and intensity of the drills.

Analysis by NK News suggests these exercises took place in Onchon County near Nampho on the west coast, deploying artillery westward despite claims of operations in border regions. The drills involved at least 20 240 mm multiple rocket launchers and at least 32 self-propelled guns of various types mounted on older trucks in the first Hongyan-Steyr series.

Kim Minseok, a research fellow at the Korea Defense and Security Forum, told Newsweek that South Korea may not be concerned about North Korea’s drills.

“The North Korean provocations that Kim Jong Un enjoys the most, and the South Korean military is most nervous about, are ballistic-missile and long-range-multiple-rocket-launcher fire. However, North Korea used 122 mm, 130 mm, 155 mm, [and] 220 mm field artillery and multiple rocket launchers in this drill—no large 400-plus mm multiple rocket launchers and short-range ballistic missiles,” he said.

Reuters reported Friday that South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff observed North Korea firing multiple rocket-launcher shells and self-propelled artillery shells toward the Yellow Sea from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time Thursday.

The JCS is closely monitoring these military activities amid the ongoing Freedom Shield exercises with the United States, which this year involves twice the number of troops compared to previous iterations, Reuters reported.

Further complicating tensions, North Korea has attempted to jam GPS signals near the South Korean border since Tuesday, an act that the JCS warned could have serious consequences despite causing no immediate damage, Reuters reported.

“North Korea’s artillery fire drills are demonstrations to show off their numbers, not tactical exercises. Firing hundreds of field artillery pieces at once in a dense area only measures that they were fired. Modern artillery combat is more about firing accurately from a dispersed position, like the ‘shoot and scoot’ artillery tactic,” Kim, the research fellow, told Newsweek.