Kim also ordered the North Korean military to increase its readiness near the western maritime border with South Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the testing of new surface-to-sea missiles while ordering his military to step up its readiness in disputed waters north of South Korea’s border island of Yeonpyeong, state media said.

The report on Thursday’s launches by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) came a day after the South Korean military said North Korea fired several cruise missiles in waters off its eastern port of Wonsan. The test was Pyongyang Sixth rocket launch of the year.

The KCNA report said Kim supervised the “evaluation test firing of the novel surface-to-sea missile Padasuri-6 to be equipped by the Navy” and expressed “very satisfaction with the results of the test firing.”

The missiles hit their intended targets after flying over the Eastern Sea for 1,400 seconds, it said. The East Sea is known internationally as the Sea of ​​Japan.

Kim also accused South Korea of ​​frequently violating his country’s sovereignty by insisting on a “Northern Limit Line” (NLL), the maritime demarcation line between the two Koreas, and conducting maritime patrols and interdicting third-party ships, KCNA. The North Korean leader also ordered his military to increase its readiness in the waters north of Yeonpyeong Island and west of the Korean Peninsula in the NLL region.

Waters near the NLL, established by the United States-led United Nations Command at the end of the Korean War in 1953, have been the site of previous clashes between the two Koreas. In 2010, North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors, and fired an artillery shell at Yeonpyeong Island, killing four others.

According to KCNA, Kim called the de facto border a “ghost border without any justification in the light of international law.”

“It doesn’t matter how many lines there are [North Korea’s] “It is clear that if the enemy violates our maritime borders, we will perceive it as a violation of our sovereignty and an armed provocation,” he was quoted as saying.

Kim also promised that Pyongyang would “thoroughly defend our maritime sovereignty through force of arms and actions, not through any rhetoric.”

Earlier this year, the North Korean leader told his country’s caucus parliament that he would no longer recognize the NLL, saying Pyongyang was doing so to give up his long-standing goal of reconciliation with Seoul. He also said that if South Korea “violates even 0.001 millimeters of our land, air and water territory, it will be considered a provocation of war.”

In a separate report, KCNA said Kim also inspected a “large” munitions factory and learned in detail about modernizing production.

During the visit, he emphasized the factory’s role in strengthening North Korea’s armed forces and outlined tasks to improve ammunition quality and increase production “as required by the prevailing situation and the evolving revolution,” KCNA said.

Kim’s visit to the munitions factory comes as the United States and its allies have accused North Korea of ​​arms trafficking with Russia.

The White House said last month that Russia had recently used North Korean-sourced short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) in attacks against Ukraine, citing newly declassified intelligence.