Kim Jong Un vows to develop North Korea’s nukes at the ‘fastest possible speed’ and suggests he would use them if provoked

• Kim Jong-Un said he planned to develop North Korea’s nuclear capacities as fast as possible. 
• He said he’d use them if countries try to hurt the “fundamental interests of our state,” the AP reported.
• He made the remarks at a Monday military parade where intercontinental ballistic missiles were displayed.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he wanted to develop the state’s nuclear weapons speedily and suggested that he would deploy them if provoked.

Speaking at a parade to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the North Korean army in Pyongyang on Monday, Kim said that the state “will continue to take measures for further developing the nuclear forces of our state at the fastest possible speed,” the Associated Press reported, citing state media. 

“The fundamental mission of our nuclear forces is to deter a war, but our nukes can never be confined to the single mission of war deterrent even at a time when a situation we are not desirous of at all is created on this land,” he said, per the AP.

“If any forces try to violate the fundamental interests of our state, our nuclear forces will have to decisively accomplish its unexpected second mission.” He did not specify what a second mission would be.

He called for the weapons to be ready to go “in motion at any time,” per the AP. 

Andrei Lankov, director of the Korea Risk Group think tank, whose media outlet NK News analyses North Korean moves, told the Financial Times that North Korea’s nuclear stocks started out as “purely defensive.” 

“But now it is clearly overkill from a defensive point of view,” he said. The goal, Lankov said, is to dominate the South Korean peninsula. 

Kim watched the parade from a balcony along with his wife, Ri Sol Ju, and top officials, the state outlet Voice of Korea reported.

Vehicles paraded giant munitions which North Korea said was the Hwasong-17, a massive new nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile. It can theoretically reach the US mainland, though experts have questioned its targeting capacity, CNN reported.

The parade comes a month after Japan and South Korea reported that North Korea tested the Hwasong-17.

North Korea hyped this with a 12-minute, Hollywood-style video showing slow-motion footage of Kim in sunglasses, touring a military facility and apparently ordering the test. 

A few days after the launch, South Korea’s defense ministry said the missile tested was likely an older version that was first launched in 2017, and said the footage may have been manipulated, the South China Morning Post reported. 

Nonetheless, the missile’s test put the US, Japan, and South Korea on alert.

The White House called that launch a “brazen violation” of UN security council regulations, which ban the state from testing ballistic missiles. North Korea does not recognize the legitimacy of the regulation.

The tests are evidence of Kim’s ambitions for North Korea’s military capacity, Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told CNN. 

Kim was “marching through” a list of military upgrades he announced last year, Lewis said, adding: “I don’t think he’s going to stop until that list is completed.”