North Korea vows to accelerate nuclear expansion, strengthen military intelligence

North Korea will strengthen its nuclear arsenal "both in quality and quantity" while expanding the role of its military intelligence agency focused on South Korea, state media reported on Friday.

The move comes as Pyongyang remains under sweeping international sanctions over its nuclear weapons programme and tensions persist on the Korean Peninsula, where the two Koreas are technically still at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

The announcement follows North Korea's repeated rejection of conciliatory gestures by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. Pyongyang has described Seoul as its "most hostile" enemy and declared its status as a nuclear state to be "irreversible".

The decisions were made during an enlarged meeting of the ruling Workers' Party's Central Military Commission on Thursday, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The commission approved measures to strengthen the country's nuclear force "both in quality and quantity", KCNA said, while also calling for a significant expansion of the functions and responsibilities of the General Reconnaissance and Intelligence Bureau, North Korea's military intelligence agency responsible for operations involving South Korea.

KCNA described the bureau as playing "a pivotal role in controlling the potential enemies' threats and gathering key information", adding that the meeting discussed ways to dramatically enhance its military reconnaissance and intelligence capabilities.

Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said the latest decisions underscore North Korea's shift toward treating the two Koreas as "two hostile states", potentially replacing the long-standing framework based on the Korean War armistice.

"Military reconnaissance takes on a different meaning under a state-to-state approach, as intelligence activities targeting another sovereign state can carry diplomatic implications," he told AFP.

Analysts say North Korea is also seeking advanced military technologies, including surveillance satellites, in exchange for supporting Russia's war in Ukraine with troops. In 2023, Pyongyang successfully launched a military reconnaissance satellite and claimed it had captured images of major US and South Korean military facilities.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said it was "closely monitoring" developments related to the reported expansion of North Korea's intelligence agency.

Since the Korean War ended in 1953, North Korea has carried out numerous espionage operations, ranging from intelligence gathering to assassinations. Among the most notable cases was the 1997 killing of high-profile defector Lee Han-young.

One of Pyongyang's most famous undercover agents was Jeong Su-il, who entered South Korea in 1984 posing as Muhammed Kansu, a Filipino-Lebanese academic. After his identity was exposed, he served prison sentences in South Korea before later becoming a historian specialising in the Silk Road and the history of West Asia.