The coming year does not promise to be a calm one on the Korean peninsula.

For the New Year, Kim Jong-un has indeed offered North Korea missile launches.

The leader also seized the opportunity of the transition to 2023 to once again threaten Seoul and Washington.

He thus called for an "exponential increase in the nuclear arsenal" of his country to face his "indisputable enemy" South Korea and the United States, the official KCNA agency reported on Sunday.

After a major meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea's ruling Workers' Party further announced that the country would "develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system whose main mission will be a rapid counterattack nuclear,” according to KCNA.

Shots Saturday and Sunday

"The current situation calls for redoubled efforts to massively build up military strength to fully guarantee the sovereignty, security and core interests (of North Korea) in response to the disturbing military maneuvers of the United States and others. hostile forces,” Kim Jong-un said in a report of the Party meeting.

"This underscores the importance and necessity of mass production of tactical nuclear weapons and calls for an exponential increase in the country's nuclear arsenal."

In another dispatch, KNCA reported comments by Kim Jong-un that South Korea was now "fully within range of nuclear strikes" from North Korea.

Three short-range ballistic missiles were also fired by North Korea on Saturday, and another on Sunday at dawn.

KCNA referred to "a very large multiple rocket launcher firing exercise".

The bad record of 2022

Tension has risen dramatically in recent months between North Korea and its southern neighbor as well as the United States and Japan.

The year 2022 was marked by a record number of missile launches by Pyongyang, which notably launched its first ICBM in five years in March.

Another intercontinental missile fell off Japan in November.

In early November, a missile fell very close to southern territorial waters, leading South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to denounce "a de facto territorial invasion".

And on December 26, five North Korean drones entered southern airspace, even flying over the northern capital Seoul.

Despite the deployment of fighter jets and helicopters for five hours, the southern army was unable to shoot down the drones during this incursion, the first of its kind in five years.

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