Pyongyang : Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK and Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, oversaw another drill of launching an intermediate-range strategic ballistic missile Hwasong 12.
He was greeted at the site by Ri Pyong Chol, Kim Jong Sik, Jo Yong Won, Yu Jin and other senior officials of the WPK Central Committee, General Kim Rak Gyom, commander of the KPA Strategic Force, and Jang Chang Ha, Jon Il Ho and other officials of the defence science sector.
The live-fire drill was waged by a Hwasong 12 operational unit with scientists and technicians in the missile research sector in attendance.
The drill was designed to deter the bellicose US that is speaking of the use of force against the DPRK, to boost the capabilities for launching attack and counterattack as a rapid, strong military response, and to check the nuclear warhead handling order and define combat-ready procedures.
Upon the arrival at the site, Kim Jong Un acquainted himself with the launch plan and preparations before giving an order to fire.
The ballistic missile flew along the preset trajectory across the air above Japan’s Hokkaido before landing home on the target waters in the Pacific Ocean.

The Supreme Leader expressed great satisfaction with the drill, saying the missile launch which is of paramount importance in enhancing the nuclear combat readiness has hit its goal successfully.
In lavish praise for the drill he added that the combat efficiency and reliability of Hwasong 12 was thoroughly verified, the operational staff’s combat capacity is flawlessly perfect, and Hwasong 12 has been made combat-ready.
The personnel of the missile research sector and Hwasong artillerymen should work together to modernize and push back the frontiers of missiles and to improve the levels of their operation, he noted.
He told the accompanying senior officials of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee and the defence science sector that “our ultimate goal is to strike a substantial balance of power so that the US rulers dare not utter any rhetoric like military option against our State” and that “we should keep building up our military attack capacity of dealing an unbearable nuclear counterstrike to the US, and race straight against time to this end”.
As is widely acknowledged, he said, we have achieved all these things under the decades-long sanctions by the UN, not thanks to its “benefits”. It is so clumsy for the so-called big countries to be still preoccupied with the daydream of bringing us into our knees by clinging to that UN sanctions, he added.
It is needed to show those big-country chauvinists how our State brings its nuclear programme into completion in the teeth of their unrestricted embargo, he said, and as we have almost reached our destination we should make every possible nationwide effort to go the full distance.