North Korean leader Kim Jong Un convened a key military meeting to discuss bolstering the country's nuclear arsenal and putting its armed forces on high alert, state media reported Sunday, in Kim's first known public appearance in about 20 days.
Kim earlier this month quelled intense rumours about his health by attending a ceremony marking the completion of a fertilizer factory in what at the time was his first public appearance in 20 days. But he hadn't made another public appearance for around 20 more days until the North's official news agency said Sunday that he led a meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party.
The meeting discussed increasing the capabilities for deterring "the threatening foreign forces," the report said, an apparent reference to the U.S. and South Korean militaries. Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said that Kim's "public appearances have more to do with domestic politics than international signalling, but it is interesting for him to reappear in state media about the time the world started noticing he'd been gone for three weeks again."
Frustrated over the lack of progress, Kim later said he would unveil "a new strategic weapon" and would no longer be bound by a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests. Kim hasn't followed through with those threats, though he did conduct a slew of short-range missile tests.
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