North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has supervised the test firing of a “new-type tactical guided weapon,” North Korean state media said Wednesday, without elaborating on what exactly the weapon is.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that Kim called the weapon’s development “an event of very weighty significance.”
“Saying that the completion of the development of the weapon system serves as an event of very weighty significance in increasing the combat power of the People’s Army, [Kim] noted that it is a very good thing that the field of national defense science has waged a dynamic struggle for attaining core research goals,” KCNA said, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.
“After watching the power of the new-type tactical guided weapon, [Kim] pointed out that our national defense scientists and workers in the field of the munitions industry performed another great work in increasing the country’s defense capabilities,” KCNA said.
The announcement of the test comes as Pyongyang and Washington continue to struggle to find a way forward on nuclear negotiations following Kim and President Trump’s failed second summit in February.
Trump has said he is in no rush to reach an agreement on nuclear negotiations as long as North Korea continues its moratorium on missile and nuclear tests.
KCNA did not specify whether Wednesday’s test was of a missile, but it did not immediately appear to violate the moratorium, much like a North Korean test of an “ultramodern tactical weapon” in November.
The February summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, ended without an agreement between the two leaders amid an impasse over how much sanctions relief the United States was willing to give and how much North Korea was willing to give up to get it.
Since then, there have been little to no public signs of progress in negotiations.
Last week, Kim said he would be open to a third summit with Trump, but gave the United States until the end of the year to be more flexible in negotiations.
Trump responded by touting his “excellent” personal relationship with Kim.
“I agree with Kim Jong Un of North Korea that our personal relationship remains very good, perhaps the term excellent would be even more accurate, and that a third Summit would be good in that we fully understand where we each stand,” Trump tweeted Saturday.
Publicly announcing a weapons test for the first time since the Hanoi summit appears to be the latest in a series of steps to increase pressure on the United States to loosen sanctions on North Korea.
North Korea previously rebuilt a satellite launch site that Kim promised Trump he would dismantle. And satellite imagery released this week showed rail cars at a nuclear facility that in the past have been associated with the movement of radioactive material.