N’Korea conducts large-scale firing drill to show strike power

North Korea conducted an artillery drill on Tuesday as a US submarine docked in South Korea.

Fears have risen in recent weeks that North Korea would conduct another nuclear test or long-range missile launch in defiance of UN sanctions, perhaps on the Tuesday 85th anniversary of its military.

But instead of a nuclear test or big missile launch, North Korea deployed a large number of long-range artillery units in the region of Wonsan on its east coast for a live-fire drill, South Korea’s military said.

North Korea has an air base in Wonsan and missiles have also been tested there.

“North Korea is conducting a large-scale firing drill in Wonsan areas this afternoon,” the South’s office of joint chiefs of staff said in a statement.

“The South Korean military was monitoring the situation and firmly maintaining readiness,” it said.

The South’s Yonhap news agency had earlier said that the exercise was possibly supervised by Kim Jong Un, North Korean leader.

North Korea’s state media was defiant in a commentary marking the anniversary, saying its military was prepared “to bring to closure the history of US scheming and nuclear blackmail”.

“There is no limit to the strike power of the people’s army armed with our style of cutting-edge military equipment including various precision and miniaturised nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles,” the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper.

The country’s growing nuclear and missile threat is perhaps the most serious security challenge confronting US President Donald Trump.