North Korea confirms carrying out nuclear simulations

North Korea said Monday it has conducted nuclear simulations personally supervised by its leader Kim Jong-un over the past two weeks.

“The Korean People’s Army’s tactical nuclear weapons units held military drills from September 25 to October 9 to verify and evaluate the country’s nuclear deterrence and counterattack capability,” North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said Monday.

The ballistic missile tests were “a simulation of a real war,” it added. “Kim Jong Un “conducted the military exercises on the spot,” the agency noted, publishing many photos of the leader and the missile launches.

The drills consisted of a “simulated loading of tactical nuclear warheads” aboard a missile that was then launched from a silo under a man-made lake in the northwest of the country on September 25, the same source said.

According to KCNA, other tests conducted in the following days included simulating the “neutralization of airports” in South Korea, “striking major command centers” and “major enemy ports.

Regarding the missile that crossed the skies over Japan on October 4, the agency said it was a “new type of intermediate-range ground-to-ground ballistic missile.

The missile traveled 4,500 kilometers before falling into the Pacific, which experts believe is the longest distance a North Korean missile has traveled to date.

KCNA justified these exercises by the joint U.S.-South Korean military maneuvers which, according to it, represents “a regrettable attitude that further aggravates the tension in the region while openly posing a military threat.”

On the other hand, Washington, Seoul and Tokyo consider these missile launches as a “serious threat to peace and security”, intensifying their military cooperation. The three allies have conducted extensive naval and air exercises around the Korean peninsula in recent weeks, including the deployment of the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.