Yonhap News reported that Kim attended North Korea's largest-ever live-fire artillery exercise east of Pyongyang, prompting South Korea's defence ministry to monitor developments in the area.
"Our military is closely monitoring the North Korean military's movements", said the statement.
Television footage showed military trailers carrying large units including what appeared to be launch canisters being driven into the planned THAAD battery site.
"To mark the anniversary, the country also seemed to aim to inspire the military's self-confidence (through the drill) internally".
At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, U.S. lawmakers probed experts on the potential consequences of a pre-emptive U.S. military strike on North Korea.
"We believe China has a very, very important role to play", said the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, Joseph Yun.
U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to prevent the North from being able to hit the United States with a nuclear missile and has said all options are on the table.
The destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer is conducting exercises with a South Korean destroyer near the Korean peninsula, while the USS Fitzgerald is doing drills with a Japanese destroyer west of Japan.
The US envoy for North Korea policy, Joseph Yun, said China had "a very, very important role to play" and South Korea's envoy, Kim Hong-kyun, said they had also discussed how to get Russia's help.
Ahead of today's 85 anniversary of Korean People's Army, there was concern that the North would mark the occasion with a nuclear or ballistic missile test, as it has in the past. A new nuclear test would send alarm bells ringing, but it wouldn't be North Korea's first, and it wouldn't necessarily indicate a change in the country's actual policy. -South Korea military exercises that are already underway.
White House Backing Away From Mexico Wall Funding In Budget
Trump has several demands that could complicate hopes on Capitol Hill for a "clean bill" - one without controversial provisions. A White House official told CNN that "politics is the art of compromise" in reference to budget negotiations.
"So it is a sign that if the North is provoked or there is preemptive action, then a lot of Seoul and its suburbs would be within artillery range of the North". However the move has angered China, which says the advanced system will do little to deter the North while destabilizing the regional security balance.
But with increasingly provocative statements and actions coming from North Korea, the emphasis is on military deterrence.
"Submarines rapidly submerged to make torpedo-attacks at the "enemy" warships while fighters and bombers made zero feet flight above the sea to drop bombs on the targets", the report said.
"We call on (North Korea) to refrain from provocative, destabilizing actions and rhetoric, and to make the strategic choice to fulfill its global obligations and commitments and return to serious talks".
The US leader has repeatedly called on China, the North's sole major ally, to do more to rein in Pyongyang, as tensions in the region soar amid speculation it will conduct another nuclear test.
On Monday, Trump called for tougher United Nations sanctions on the North, saying it was a global threat and "a problem that we have to finally solve". He said, "People have put blindfolds on for decades", signaling again that the time for "strategic patience" toward the North is over.
The drills coincided with military exercises held by US and South Korean navies in the Yellow Sea, off the western coast of the Korean Peninsula and as the USS Michigan, one of US's most powerful submarines, arrived in South Korea.
Its deployment was met with threats by the North Koreans.
In the event of an attack, it said, "The world will witness how Washington's rash nuclear aircraft carriers are turned into a huge pile of steel and buried at sea and how a country called America is wiped out from the Earth".
Seoul's intelligence officials believe Pyongyang is preparing a sixth nuclear test at any moment.
Comments