Kim Jong Un Points to a "Secret Underwater Weapon" as North Korea Expands Its Navy

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un referred to a plan to develop a secret underwater weapon, the Russian outlet RBC reported, while presenting the navy as a central part of his country's new five-year defense program. He said the naval forces must be capable of delivering, in his words, crushing strikes on an adversary at any moment.

The remarks accompanied a visit, made alongside his daughter, to a newly built North Korean destroyer during exercises. The pairing of a public inspection with talk of a concealed underwater capability fits a familiar pattern in which Pyongyang advertises its conventional progress while hinting at systems it has not shown, a method designed to maximize deterrence and bargaining leverage.

The announcement comes in a region already moving toward rearmament. Japan and its neighbors are expanding their militaries and, in Tokyo's case, preparing to export missiles, while maritime confrontations with China multiply across the Indo-Pacific. A North Korean push to build naval and undersea strike capacity adds to that arms race and complicates the calculations of every government planning its own defense spending.

The details remain unverifiable, as is typical of North Korean weapons claims, and the references to a hidden underwater system cannot be independently confirmed. What is clearer is the overall direction, a sustained military buildup that reinforces the wider hardening of a non-Western bloc and keeps Northeast Asia on a rising defense-spending path.