US 'root cause' of instability, says North Korea's Kim Jong Un

The North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has blamed the United States for tensions on the peninsula. The US is the "root cause" of instability, he said on Tuesday in an opening speech at a defence exhibition, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. "There is no basis in their actions for believing that it is not hostile," he added, according to KCNA. Their "unrestricted and dangerous attempts to strengthen military power are destroying the military balance on the Korean peninsula and increasing military instability and danger", he added.

Pyongyang is under multiple international sanctions over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, which have made rapid progress under Kim. In 2017, it tested missiles that can reach the whole of the continental US and carried out by far its most powerful nuclear explosion to date, and Pyongyang says it needs its arsenal to protect itself against a US invasion. Kim's address came after the North in recent weeks tested a long-range cruise missile, a train-launched weapon, and what it said was a hypersonic warhead. In 2018, Kim became the first North Korean leader ever to meet a sitting US president at the headline-grabbing Singapore summit.

Washington and Seoul are security allies and Washington stations around 28,500 troops in the South to defend it against its neighbour, which invaded in 1950. Seoul is itself on a multi-billion-dollar drive to step up its own military capabilities, successfully testing its first submarine-launched ballistic missile in September -- putting the South among an elite group of nations with proven SLBM technology -- and revealing a supersonic cruise missile.