Politics

Kim convenes Pyongyang military meeting amid growing tensions

Seoul, Jun 22 (EFE).- North Korean leader Kim Jong-un convened a meeting of the Central Military Commission in Pyongyang, state-run news agency KCNA reported Wednesday.

The meeting of the eighth Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) was held on Tuesday amid escalating tensions and reports of an imminent nuclear test by the regime.

The meeting will “review the overall work for national defense in the first half of the year, and put on its agenda the issues of confirming the crucial and urgent tasks to build up national defense and thoroughly implementing the military line and key defense policies of the Party,” the agency said.

It will also “analyze and review the work system, order and actual conditions of the WPK Central Military Commission and the provincial, city and county Party military commissions and discuss major tasks for further enhancing the function and role of the military commissions at all levels,” KCNA added.

The meeting comes at a time of growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula following a record 19 missile tests by North Korea so far this year and a hardened response from Washington and Seoul, especially after the election of conservative Yoon Suk-yeol in South Korea in May.

North Korea, which cut itself off from the outside world in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, has ignored offers to resume dialogue, which has been stalled since 2019.

Last year, it approved a program of military modernization that is behind its missile launches and preparations, detected by satellites since February, for what would be its seventh nuclear test and the first in five years. EFE

asb/pd/tw

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