SEOUL, June 4 (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a newly operational nuclear \u200cmaterial production facility and called for an “exponential” \u200cexpansion of the country’s atomic arsenal, state media KCNA said on \u200bThursday.<\/p>\n
Kim said production capacity for weapons-grade nuclear material had reached more than double its previous level over the past five years and instructed officials to further \u200cincrease output to \u2060meet long-term strategic goals.<\/p>\n
During the visit, Kim was briefed on new production processes incorporating \u2060more advanced technology and reviewed current output targets and future plans, KCNA reported.<\/p>\n
Kim said the expansion was \u200bnecessary given \u200bwhat he called worsening \u200bsecurity threats and long-term \u200cconfrontation with hostile forces, and reaffirmed the country\u2019s policy of continuously increasing its nuclear deterrent.<\/p>\n
KCNA said a key consultative meeting on bolstering nuclear forces was held the same day, at which Kim outlined guidelines \u200cfor accelerating both the qualitative \u200band quantitative expansion of North \u200bKorea\u2019s nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n
Kim \u200bsaid the country had made \u201cresponsible and \u200csignificant decisions,\u201d including setting out \u200bthe sequence and \u200bsafeguards for executing what he described as a vast plan to strengthen nuclear forces \u201cexponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n
North Korea \u200bhad \u201cset a transformative \u200cmilestone for the advancement of nuclear capabilities,\u201d \u200bhe said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kyu-seok Shim; Editing by Chris \u200bReese and Nia Williams)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, June 4 (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a newly operational nuclear \u200cmaterial production…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7982,5085,178,141,31,34,177,4925,24571,5501,24570],"class_list":["post-40678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-north-korea","tag-arsenal","tag-expansion","tag-kcna","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korean-leader","tag-nuclear-arsenal","tag-nuclear-deterrent","tag-nuclear-forces","tag-nuclear-material"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}