Breitbart South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said on Friday that North Korea is stepping up readiness activities for its air and artillery units, for no apparent reason.
The activity could indicate Pyongyang is preparing another illegal missile test, or it could be related to the disappearance of dictator Kim Jong-un, believed by some outside observers to be dead or incapacitated.
Speaking at a ceremony for commissioned medical and veterinary officers on Friday, Jeong said North Korea “has been heightening military tensions through an unusual increase in the inspection activities for its combat readiness posture, mostly of its artillery, and in its air force planes’ flight operations.”
South Korea’s Yonhap News assumed this activity was related to North Korea’s provocative artillery drills and missile tests:
The latest one took place last week, during which the North fired what appeared to be surface-to-ship cruise missiles off its east coast. On the same day, the North also flew Sukhoi-variant fighter jets and MiG-type planes above the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, and fired multiple air-to-ground missiles into the East Sea.
A Joint Chiefs of Staff officer earlier said there has been an increase in North Korea’s surveillance activities in skies near its demarcation line with China over the Yellow Sea, adding that some maritime and air spaces over the body of waters have not been clearly declared either by Pyongyang or Beijing.
This pattern of behavior began too long ago to be interpreted as a sudden tightening of North Korea’s defense posture in response to Kim Jong-un becoming incapacitated, although it is possible the military was generally growing nervous about the corpulent young dictator’s health or about the oncoming coronavirus pandemic. North Korea officially denies having any domestic coronavirus infections to this day, but outsiders give little credit to those denials.
