North Korean leader Kim calls for stockpiling nuclear weapons amid US-South Korea military drills

(Patria) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country needs to rapidly expand its nuclear arsenal and called the joint military exercises of the United States and South Korea "a clear expression of their will to provoke war," state media KCNA reported.

South Korea and its ally the United States began joint military exercises this week, including testing an upgraded response to heightened North Korean nuclear threats.

Pyongyang regularly criticizes such drills as invasion rehearsals and sometimes responds with weapons tests, but Seoul and Washington say they are purely defensive, Reuters reports.

The eleven-day annual exercises, called Ulchi Freedom Shield, will be similar in scale to those in 2024, but adjusted by moving twenty of the forty field exercises to September, the South Korean military said earlier. This comes as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung speaks of wanting to ease tensions with North Korea, although analysts are skeptical.

The exercises were "a clear expression of their intention to remain extremely hostile and confrontational" toward North Korea, Kim said during a visit to a destroyer.

He said the security environment requires the country to "rapidly expand" its nuclear arsenal, noting that recent US-South Korean exercises included a "nuclear element."

A report by the Federation of American Scientists last year concluded that while North Korea may have produced enough fissile material to build up to ninety nuclear warheads, it has likely assembled around fifty.

North Korea plans to build a third 5,000-ton Choe Hyon-class destroyer by October next year and is testing cruise and anti-aircraft missiles for those warships.