North Korea plans to build a 10,000-ton destroyer and develop secret underwater weapons, state media said on Saturday, ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n
The Rodong Sinmun newspaper, reporting on a Thursday naval test supervised by leader Kim Jong Un, said he ordered the navy to deploy the destroyer Kang Kon and another 5,000-ton warship, the Choe Hyon, as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
The newspaper did not give further details.<\/p>\n
It is the first time North Korea has mentioned a plan to build a 10,000-ton destroyer, said Hong Min, a senior analyst at South Korea\u2019s Institute for National Unification.<\/p>\n
Kim may be seeking to showcase the country\u2019s military capabilities ahead of Xi\u2019s visit on Monday and Tuesday, Hong said.<\/p>\n
The North Korean leader said Pyongyang must enhance its naval capabilities to deter a nuclear war, while calling for powerful military capabilities across land, sea and air, the newspaper said.<\/p>\n
Xi is making his first visit to North Korea in nearly seven years as Beijing looks to reassert ties with Pyongyang, its only formal treaty ally.<\/p>\n
Before the visit was announced, Kim on Thursday called for an \u201cexponential\u201d expansion of North Korea\u2019s atomic arsenal during a visit to a newly operational nuclear material production factory.<\/p>\n
During Kim\u2019s ship inspection, he was joined by his daughter, believed to be a teenager named Ju Ae, a photo published by the newspaper showed.<\/p>\n
North Korea said in May 2025 that a 5,000-ton destroyer had partially capsized during a launching ceremony in Chongjin port. Kim, who was overseeing the ceremony, condemned the accident and called it a \u201ccriminal act\u201d that could not be tolerated.<\/p>\n
After the ship was repaired at Rajin port, a second launching ceremony was held the next month, when the vessel was named the Kang Kon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea plans to build a 10,000-ton destroyer and develop secret underwater weapons, state media said on Saturday, ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Rodong Sinmun newspaper, reporting on a Thursday naval test supervised by leader Kim Jong Un, said he ordered the navy to deploy the destroyer Kang Kon and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18406,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404\/revisions\/18406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}