The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and President of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, visited the destroyer Kang Kon of the Navy of the Korean People's Army, which has launched into the shakedown for assessing its ability to carry out operations, and inspected its navigation test on June 4.

He was accompanied by Jo Chun Ryong, secretary of the Central Committee of the WPK, Kim Jong Sik, first deputy department director of the WPK Central Committee, Pak Kwang Sop, commander of the Navy, Pak Jong Chon, advisor to the Ministry of National Defence, Kim Kang Il, vice-minister of National Defence and director of the General Armaments Bureau, Jang Chang Ha, general director of the Missile Administration, Kim Yong Hwan, president of the Academy of Defence Sciences, Kim Myong Son, director of the Armaments Examination Bureau of the Ministry of National Defence, commanding officers of the Navy and senior officials in the field of warship building.

Comrade Kim Jong Un boarded the destroyer Kang Kon and learned about the actual conditions of various combat duty spaces and elements including the control centre, the plan for the navigation test and the phased schedule of the test of the warship's weapon systems.

The navigation test was conducted to assess different manoeuvring elements of the destroyer in his presence.

He praised the sailors for their high ability to operate the warship and expressed satisfaction over the cruise and high-speed manoeuvring systems of the warship whose manoeuvrability is very good enough to meet operational requirements.

Referring to the global development aspect of the warship building industry and the structural features of warship design, he clarified the important tasks of further refining the warship control system in a Korean way so as to meet the requirements for the performance of operational mission of the Navy.

It is possible to deter war and defend peace only when we possess substantial and powerful military muscle capable of exercising military sovereignty in a responsible manner in any space of the ground, the sea and the air, he said, stating that this is the invariable view of the WPK and its national defence policy. In particular, the issue of rapidly developing and strengthening the naval force of the DPRK into a force capable of reliably taking charge of a part of the nuclear war deterrent and into a group that can deal a deadly blow to the enemy any moment under and on the water is a matter which the WPK regards as the most important core task in the new five-year national defence development policy, he noted.

He expressed great trust and expectations that the ambitious future plans for bolstering up the warship force, including the development and production of secret underwater weapons and the building of 10 000-tonnage destroyers which would be pushed according to the five-year plan for modernizing the Navy approved by the Ninth Congress of the WPK, would be surely carried out by the reliable and powerful defence science research group, self-supporting shipbuilding industry and competent and resourceful workers in the munitions industry.

He warmly encouraged the officials, scientists and technicians of warship and weapon system research institutes, hoping that they will successfully conduct the shakedown for assessing the destroyer’s ability to carry out operations and put the destroyers Choe Hyon and Kang Kon into commission for the Navy as soon as possible with their honourable sense of mission and high sense of responsibility.