ISTANBUL

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said a plan by South Korea to develop nuclear-powered submarines with the US is a threat to stability in the region, calling it an “offensive act,” state news agency KCNA reported on Thursday.

Kim made the remarks during his inspection of an under-construction 8,700-ton nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine.

He said Seoul’s plan to build nuclear-powered submarines “will worsen the instability in the region of the Korean Peninsula” and stressed that Pyongyang regards it “as an offensive act severely violating its security and maritime sovereignty and a threat to its security that must be countered.”

Kim said that given the current situation, it is an “urgent task and indispensable option to further accelerate the radical development of the modernization and nuclear weaponization of the naval force” of North Korea.

The KCNA said Pyongyang is developing a nuclear-powered submarine equipped with guided missiles, a project it first unveiled in March.

Kim also observed the test-firing of a “new-type high-altitude long-range anti-air missile” on Wednesday, noting that the missile successfully hit a mock target at an altitude of 200 kilometers (124 miles).

Separately, a spokesperson from North Korea’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday slammed the US after one of its nuclear-powered submarines arrived at a key naval base in South Korea on Tuesday to restock supplies.

The USS Greeneville, a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, arrived at the naval base in Busan, about 330 kilometers (205 miles) southeast of Seoul, Seoul’s navy said.

“The repeated emergence of the US strategic asset … constitutes a grave act of causing instability and escalating military tensions in the Korean peninsula and the region,” the spokesperson said, according to the KCNA.

New Year greetings

In a separate report, the KCNA said Russian President Vladimir Putin sent New Year’s greetings to Kim, thanking him for his ongoing military support for the war in Ukraine.

“The heroic entry of soldiers of the (North) Korean People's Army into the battles for liberating the Kursk region from occupiers and the subsequent activities of Korean engineers in the land of Russia clearly proved the invincible friendship and militant fraternity between the Russian Federation and the DPRK (North Korea),” the message read.

North Korea sent around 1,000 military engineers to Kursk in August to assist Russian forces in clearing mines laid during the fighting with Ukrainian troops.

The deployment followed an earlier dispatch of an estimated 15,000 North Korean combat troops to support Russia’s war effort, according to South Korea's spy agency, which claims Pyongyang lost 2,000 troops in the war.