<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">North Korea's recent missile tests involved "tactical nuclear" drills to simulate hitting the South, and were overseen by leader Kim Jong Un in response to US-led joint military exercises in the region, state media said Monday.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kim made acquiring tactical nukes -- smaller, lighter weapons designed for battlefield use -- a top priority at a key party congress in January 2021, and this year vowed to develop North Korea's nuclear forces at the fastest possible speed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The country revised its nuclear laws last month to allow pre-emptive strikes, with Kim declaring North Korea an "irreversible" nuclear power -- effectively ending the possibility of negotiations over its arsenal.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since then, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have ramped up combined military exercises, including deploying a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier to the area twice, infuriating Pyongyang, which sees such drills as rehearsals for invasion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In response, North Korea "decided to organize military drills under the simulation of an actual war" that gamed out hitting South Korea's ports, airports and military command facilities, KCNA said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">North Korean army units involved in "the operation of tactical nukes staged military drills from September 25 to October 9 in order to check and assess the war deterrent and nuclear counterattack capability," the report said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kim "guided the military drills on the spot," it said, adding he had dismissed the idea of restarting talks, saying North Korea "felt no necessity to do so."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The report also said that North Korea's October 4 missile launch, which flew over Japan and prompted rare evacuation warnings, involved a "new-type ground-to-ground intermediate-range ballistic missile."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That test aimed to "send more powerful and clear warning to the enemies."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>Dangerous dynamic</b></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">North Korea's claim its missile launches are a "response" to US-South Korea drills is part of a "familiar spiral dynamic" on the Korean peninsula, said US-based security analyst Ankit Panda.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I worry that this is the start of a dangerous dynamic on the Korean Peninsula, where we have two states in a bitter rivalry and each faces strong incentives to fire first in a serious crisis," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We also have no real measures of negotiated restraint or hotlines to manage crises," he added.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The North Koreans haven't yet defined what exactly they consider to be a tactical nuclear weapon or mission ... but we're starting to see a picture that suggests any nuclear weapon they'd look to use early in a conflict can be defined as a 'tactical' capability," he told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">North Korea also released multiple photographs of the recent missile launches, tests and exercises showing Kim Jong Un overseeing them all, giving orders and posing with smiling soldiers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is significant that North Korea is not framing the recent launches as tests of the missiles themselves, but of the units that launch them, analysts said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That suggests these systems are deployed," Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies wrote on Twitter.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b><br></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>'Nuclear harbinger'</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In addition to the array of "tactical nuclear" drills, North Korea said it had carried out "a large-scale combined air-attack drill," which was also overseen by Kim.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">KCNA said this involved "more than 150 fighter planes" but analysts dismissed this as domestic propaganda, and Seoul said last week it had only detected 12 North Korean warplanes flying in formation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The volley of KCNA statements about its recent tests -- which are unusual, as state media no longer routinely comments on launches -- indicates Pyongyang is concerned about the recent US-led joint drills, analysts said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"To strengthen its self-proclaimed deterrent, it is making explicit the nuclear threat behind its recent missile launches," said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The KCNA report may also be a harbinger of a forthcoming nuclear test for the kind of tactical warhead that would arm the units Kim visited in the field," he added.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Officials in Washington and Seoul have been warning for months that North Korea has completed preparations for another nuclear test -- which would be the country's seventh, and first since 2017.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The fears of a nuclear war in Ukraine are no longer someone else's concern," Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University, told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We need to take more seriously the fact that the possibility of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula has increased." AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>