SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch of two long-range strategic cruise missiles, state media reported on Thursday.

The Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said Wednesday's test launch was aimed at "enhancing the combat effectiveness and power" of cruise missiles deployed to the Korean People's Army.

"The country must continue to expand the operational area of ​​the nuclear strategic armed forces to resolutely prevent any critical military crisis and war crisis, and the test launch is a warning to the enemy," Kim Jong Un said.

KCNA said on Monday that Kim had led nuclear strategic drills aimed at South Korea for the past two weeks in protest at recent joint naval exercises by South Korean-US forces.

The two missiles tested Wednesday flew for 10,234 seconds and clearly hit their target 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) away, KCNA reported.
A US State Department spokesman declined to comment on the launches.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration rolled out a long-delayed national security strategy on Wednesday with only a lone reference to North Korea, underscoring limited U.S. options to contain its nuclear and missile programs.

Daniel Russell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia under former President Barack Obama, said this was striking, "not only because it passes so quickly past a persistent and existential threat, but also because it frames the strategy as 'seeking sustained diplomacy toward denuclearization,'

when North Korea has so convincingly demonstrated its utter rejection of negotiations."

The North's pursuit of new types of nuclear weapons has renewed calls by some in South Korea to redeploy American tactical nuclear weapons, which were withdrawn in 1991, or for Seoul to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty and develop its own arsenal.

After backing the idea of ​​asking the United States to redeploy nuclear weapons during the election campaign last year, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has since said that option has been ruled out.