North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has inspected a newly built submarine and ordered officials to further bolster the country's military capabilities, state media reported Tuesday, as the North increases pressure on the United States ahead of the possible resumption of nuclear diplomacy.
Last week, North Korea said it may lift its 20-month suspension of nuclear and missile tests to protest expected military drills between the United States and South Korea that Pyongyang says are an invasion rehearsal.
The submarine report comes as the US and North Korea work to resume talks after a meeting late last month on the Korean border between Kim and US President Donald Trump.
Diplomacy has been stalled since the second Kim-Trump summit in Vietnam in February fell apart due to differences over US-led sanctions on North Korea.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency reported Tuesday that Kim expressed "great satisfaction" with the submarine after learning about its operational and tactical data and weapon systems.
Kim "stressed the need to steadily and reliably increase the national defense capability by directing big efforts to the development of the naval weapons and equipment such as submarine," according to KCNA.
KCNA said the submarine's operational deployment "is near at hand."
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