Kim also highlighted Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, saying: “We will focus on projects to increase the number of nuclear weapons and expand nuclear operational means.”
Despite long-standing international sanctions, North Korea has continued to build its nuclear capabilities, regularly testing banned intercontinental missiles.
State-run KCNA said this week that under Kim’s leadership North Korea “radically improved” its “war deterrence”, “with the nuclear forces as its pivot”.
The secrecy of the regime, however, makes it difficult to evaluate how much progress its military has actually made.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an independent think tank, estimated last year that North Korea had around 50 assembled nuclear warheads and enough fissile material to produce up to 40 more.
Kim also previously called for a “limitless” expansion of the country’s nuclear programme in November 2024.
Last year, US President Trump released a global security road map that conspicuously did not mention the denuclearisation of North Korea as a goal – despite that being a constant in the National Security Strategy of every US president since 2003, when Pyongyang’s nuclear programme emerged.
The omission fuelled speculation that talks between Trump and Kim, last held in 2019, could soon be revived.
Trump’s previous road map, issued during his first term in 2017, mentioned North Korea 16 times – describing it as a threat and a rogue state that could “use a nuclear weapon against the United States”.
Kim, however, has long insisted that denuclearisation is not something Pyongyang is considering.
“The concept of ‘denuclearisation’ has already lost its meaning. We have become a nuclear state,” he told parliament in September. “I say ‘denuclearisation’ is the last, last thing to expect from us.”
“If the United States, freeing itself from its absurd pursuit of others’ denuclearisation and recognising the reality, wants genuine peaceful coexistence with us, there is no reason for us not to come face to face with it.”