North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called for a “drastic boost” of the country’s missile production capacity, the North’s state media said Monday, ahead of a key joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States next week.

Kim made the remarks during a two-day visit to major factories that produce tactical missiles and rocket launchers Friday and Saturday, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The visit came less than a week after the North Korean leader conducted a three-day “field guidance” of major munitions factories as South Korea and the United States plan to hold their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which Pyongyang has denounced as a rehearsal for an invasion of the North.

This year’s combined military exercise, scheduled for Aug. 21-31, will feature various contingency drills, such as the computer simulation-based command post exercise, concurrent field training and Ulchi civil defense drills.

It also came just days after Kim presided over an enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, calling for preparing for a possible war in an “offensive” manner by modernizing munitions factories and mass-producing weapons.

“He set forth an important goal to drastically boost the existing missile production capacity… so as to mass-produce missiles as required by the system of the expanded and strengthened frontline units and missile units and by the operational plans,” the KCNA said.

Kim was also quoted as saying that the North’s Korean People’s Army (KPA) should be equipped with an “overwhelming military force” for “coping with any war at any moment so as to prevent the enemies from daring use their armed forces, and surely annihilate them if they launch an attack.”

Such a “qualitative level of war preparations” hinges on the development of the munitions industry, Kim said, again highlighting the role of the arms factories in “speeding up the war preparations” of the KPA, according to the KCNA.

During his visit to a factory producing tactical missile transporter erector launchers (TELs), Kim called for the production of “more modern and highly efficient TELs substantially conducive to the army’s perfect war preparations,” it said.

Source: Yonhap News Agency