North Korea has commissioned the Choe Hyon, its largest warship to date, in a ceremony held on June 23 at the port city of Nampho \u2014 opening what leader Kim Jong Un called a new chapter in the country’s naval history and signaling an accelerating push to field nuclear-capable surface combatants at sea.<\/p>\n
The 5,000-ton destroyer, hull number 51, is the first in its class and was built at Nampho Shipyard. It was launched on April 25, 2025, and conducted a series of sea trials and weapons tests \u2014 several of which Kim personally oversaw \u2014 before its commissioning. The ship has been assigned to the Korean People’s Army Navy’s West Sea Fleet.<\/p>\n
“Today, June 23, 2026, is witnessing the first page being written in a new chapter of our Navy’s history of safeguarding the sacred maritime sovereignty of our state on the strength of invincible warships,” Kim said at the ceremony<\/a>.<\/p>\n Indigenously built, indigenously armed<\/p>\n The Choe Hyon<\/a> is entirely domestically manufactured and armed with indigenous weapons systems \u2014 a detail Kim emphasized explicitly. The commissioning, he argued, demonstrates that North Korea faces no technological barriers in building and deploying destroyers and cruisers of different classes.<\/p>\n “We are now switching over to the stage of building various surface and underwater combat systems and deploying them offshore and in the oceans without feeling any restrictions,” Kim said per the KCNA transcript.<\/p>\n Few technical specifications have been officially released. However, at 5,000 tons, the Choe Hyon dwarfs anything the Korean People’s Army Navy has previously operated. For context, the U.S. Navy’s Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers displace approximately 9,855 metric tons, while the Republic of Korea Navy’s<\/a> KDX-II-class destroyers displace approximately 10,000 metric tons.<\/p>\n The 10,000-ton nuclear cruisers<\/p>\n The Choe Hyon is the beginning of a production run, not a one-off capability demonstration. A second ship \u2014 the Kang Kon (hull 52) \u2014 is slated for commissioning in the near future. The Kang Kon was relaunched on June 12, 2025, after a failed initial launch on May 21, 2025, that drew international attention and South Korean assessments that the incident reflected rushed handling and inexperienced personnel on a vessel larger than anything the KPAN had managed before.<\/p>\n