North Korean leader Kim Jong Un opened the Defence Development-2025 military hardware exhibition in Pyongyang by calling for the “continuous development” of North Korea’s defence capabilities, stressing that complacency must never set in. He said the exhibition highlights the regime’s progress on key defence projects and reiterated that the core structure of North Korea’s military — with a nuclear deterrent as its backbone — must evolve on an “increasingly modern, advanced footing.”
Kim warned that U.S. and South Korean military cooperation, especially under “nuclear operations guidelines,” poses a “real and serious threat” to the peninsula’s security. He accused Washington and Seoul of expanding strategic strike and reconnaissance assets around Korea and of conducting exercises aimed at executing pre-emptive scenarios. In response, he said that Pyongyang has allocated “special assets” to key adversarial targets, but declined to elaborate on their nature, leaving open the possibility of new, undisclosed capability deployments.
State media described the exhibition as a showcase of the “recent results of the important projects” pursued by the defence industry, with Kim praising scientists, technicians and workers for raising North Korea’s military strength. He framed the call for unrelenting development as both a strategic necessity and ideological imperative: “Our military capabilities should be improved steadily,” he said.
