North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vowed to mobilise all means to deal a "death-blow" to the country's enemy without hesitation should it opt for military confrontation with North Korea, state media said on Thursday.
"There are also issues of preventing the birth rate from falling and well nurturing children," he said at the fifth National Meeting of Mothers that opened on Sunday in Pyongyang.
Kim expressed "sincere regard" for Russia's aviation technology undergoing rapid development and "outpacing the outside potential threats", it added.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited cemeteries to pay respects to the country's soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War and to commemorate the anniversary of the signing of the armistice, state media said on Wednesday.
North Korea called its failed attempt to launch a purported military reconnaissance satellite the "most serious" shortcoming in the first half of this year and reaffirmed its pledge to put it into orbit soon, Pyongyang's state media said on Monday.
Kim declared in December an end to moratoriums on nuclear and ballistic missile tests, and Pyongyang has repeatedly said it has no intention to continue talks unless Washington drops what it describes as “hostile” policies toward the North.
The meeting held on Thursday included no mention of inter-Korean relations, an apparent indication that Kim might be focusing on internal unity, rather than external issues, amid lingering fears about the global pandemic, Yonhap news agency reported.
The moves included re-entering areas of the North that it had withdrawn from as part of inter-Korean projects, restoring guard posts in the Demilitarized Zone that forms the border, and stepping up exercises.
The two zones are sites of long-shuttered joint inter-Korean projects: Southern tourists visited the scenic Mount Kumgang until a North Korean soldier in 2008 shot dead a woman who strayed off the path.
On Tuesday, North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.
