North Korea’s Kim Jong Un unveils 5,000-tonne warship, warns US with pledge of strategic deterrence

SEOUL  — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended a ceremony for the launch of a “new multipurpose destroyer”, state media KCNA reported on Saturday. The 5,000-tonne warship was equipped with the “most powerful weapons” and built “within 400-odd days perfectly with our own strength and technology”, the report said, quoting Jo Chun Ryong, a secretary in the ruling Workers’ Party.

Kim, in a speech from the launch reported by KCNA, said the warship would be handed over to the navy and go into service early next year.

Footage from North Korea’s state-run television KRT showed Kim arriving in Nampho with his daughter Ju Ae after travelling to the western port city by train.

“If the US continues to renew its record in the protests of military power, we will have no choice but to renew it in the exercise of strategic deterrence,” the leader was heard saying on TV footage.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of Kim Jong Un, also appeared in the TV footage.

The launch, which took place on Friday at the military shipbuilding dockyard of Nampho, marked a new era of the “great Kim Jong Un-style fleet building”, KCNA said, quoting Vice-Admiral Pak Kwang Sop.

The ship was graded as the “Choe Hyon-class”, named after anti-Japanese revolutionary fighter Choe Hyon, the report said.