North Korea expands, reorganizes military units with operational combat missions

Agencies | Seoul

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

North Korea has "expanded and reorganized" many of its military units in accordance with new security situations, assigning operational combat missions to them, state media said Monday.

The report came after North Korea held a massive military parade last week to mark the 75th founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army (KPA), displaying intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and other advanced weaponry, as well as new military units, Tonhap news agency reports.

"Many units of services and arms of the KPA have been expanded and reorganized, major operational combat duties assigned to them" as required by new situations and changed strategic and tactical missions of overall units, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, without specifying in what way military units have been expanded.

In an English-language statement, the KCNA said the North has redesigned the colors of military units, which "fully demonstrated their dignity and honor at the military parade" to celebrate the KPA anniversary.

The North earlier pledged to expand and intensify military drills and "perfect" its war readiness posture in response to Seoul-Washington's joint military exercises involving strategic assets.

Military parade photos carried by state media last week showed one of the military colors having a picture of the Hwasong-17 ICBM and the numbers 2022.11. This has spawned speculation that the North may have created a unit in charge of ICBM operations in November last year, Yonhap added.

The colors of the Missile General Bureau were detected during the military event, after being unveiled for the first time at a party military meeting early last week.

The KCNA also reported the parade featured columns of "specialist service persons including the 191 Command Intelligence Brigade." Observers said the unit appears to be in charge of the North's communications and intelligence, with the secretive regime vowing to put a spy satellite into orbit by April.