PYONGYANG, North Korea
North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, has fired his top general amid a shakeup of the country’s military leadership and wants his army to “gird for a war,” state media reported Thursday.
General Pak Su Il was dismissed
as chief of the General Staff and Vice Marshal Ri Yong Gil was appointed in his
place, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Other “leading commanding
officers” were dismissed, transferred or appointed during a meeting of the
Central Military Commission on Wednesday, KCNA reported, without going into
details.
North Korea regularly revamps
its military leadership. Some military leaders later reemerge in different
positions, while others disappear from public view.
And the career of the new top
general Ri – who assumed the No. 2 job in the North Korean military hierarchy
as recently as December 31 – reflected that, analysts said.
“Ri Yong Gil is a longstanding
member of North Korea’s military elite, who before making it to the top,
experienced ups and downs during his career. Seven years ago, he was even
rumored to have been executed after a personnel reshuffle,” said Leif-Eric Easley,
professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior
analyst at the Sejong Institute private think tank near Seoul, said there may
be a range of reasons behind Kim’s military reshuffle and it was not necessarily
punitive.
“Since Kim Jong Un has
frequently promoted, demoted, and dismissed executives according to their
ability to perform duties, dismissal of executives may be holding them
accountable, but it is inappropriate to consider them as punishment,” Cheong
said.
Easley said the North Korean
leader may simply be trying to ensure that no one below him becomes too
powerful.
“Kim Jong Un frequently
rotates leadership posts below him to prevent the emergence in North Korea of
anyone like [Wagner Group founder] Yevgeny Prigozhin, who challenged Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s authority after amassing personal control of
financial assets and loyalty among armed forces,” Easley said.
The shake-up of the military
leadership was mentioned only near the end of the KCNA report, which focused
more on what it said was the “important issue of making the army more
thoroughly gird for a war given the grave political and military situation
prevailing in the Korean Peninsula.”
South Korea and its chief
ally, the United States, were not mentioned by name in the report.
However, it appeared to refer
to them obliquely, saying the meeting “analyzed the military moves of the chief
culprits of deteriorated situation” on the peninsula.
“Making full war preparations”
was the top agenda item for the meeting, the KCNA report said.
“The present situation, in
which the hostile forces are getting ever more undisguised in their reckless
military confrontation with the DPRK, [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea]
requires the latter’s army to have more positive, proactive and overwhelming
will and thoroughgoing and perfect military readiness for a war,” it said.
North Korea has ramped up its
military rhetoric this summer, threatening to shoot down US reconnaissance
planes and retaliate for the port call of a US nuclear-capable ballistic
missile submarine to South Korea for the first time in four decades.
Pyongyang has also showcased
its advances in ballistic missile technology, last month testing what it said was
a Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a flight time that
suggests it has the ability to strike the US mainland.
That weapon was among a slew
of others shown off at what North Korea called its “Victory Day” parade last
month, a commemoration of the armistice that ended the fighting in the Korean
War 70 years ago.
Technically, the two Koreas
remain at war as no formal peace treaty was ever signed.
At Wednesday’s meeting in
Pyongyang, Kim signed orders for war drills involving the country’s newest
weapons.
Kim late last week toured arms
and munitions factories and gave “important directions” regarding
“capacity-building for the serial production of new ammunition,” a KCNA report
said.
Amid the tension on the
peninsula, South Korea announced this month it would hold a nationwide civil
defense drill on August 23.
Most of the country’s 51
million residents are expected to practice evacuating to shelters or
underground safe spaces during the 20-minute exercise, which Seoul says is in
response to “provocations” from Pyongyang.
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