Credit : BRICS NEWS
PYONGYANG, October 24, 2026 — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for his country to build the “strongest” military, BRICS News reported on X on Saturday, following a two-day meeting of army company commanders in Pyongyang.
The post, published at about 7.08am Malaysia time and marked “JUST IN”, read: “Kim Jong Un calls for North Korea to build the world’s ‘strongest’ military.” It was accompanied by a photograph of the North Korean leader.
https://x.com/BRICSinfo/status/2113769594032660565
The remarks were reported by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Saturday. According to Reuters, Kim addressed the third conference of company commanders of the Korean People’s Army, held in Pyongyang on October 22 and 23. KCNA said it was the first military-wide gathering since the Ninth Congress of the ruling Workers’ Party in February.
“Let us build the strongest army and speed up a military revolution in our style,” Kim said, according to KCNA. He called for every company to fully prepare so that “the goal of the new-era military build-up” could be achieved, and urged that army companies be turned into elite, self-sufficient combat units. Reuters noted that KCNA’s wording referred to building the strongest army, rather than explicitly claiming North Korea would have the strongest military in the world.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that Kim delivered a speech titled “Building a Powerful Army in the New Era and the Tasks of Company Commanders”. He told the commanders that companies across the military must be ideologically “purified”, militarily and technically elite, and moulded into a flawless combat force, and urged them to improve discipline, company management and soldiers’ living conditions.
Yonhap said senior figures including Pak Jong Chon, vice-chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission, Defence Minister Kim Song Gi and Chief of the General Staff Ri Yong Gil attended the event. KCNA described the conference as giving fresh momentum to efforts to make each company a “multi-service, all-purpose” unit capable of carrying out any combat mission independently.
The appearance also came after rumours about Kim’s health spread on foreign social media in recent days. Yonhap reported that North Korean state television had shown Kim visiting a light industry exhibition on October 20, and that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told a parliamentary committee on Friday that the rumours of his death were false.
During February’s party congress, which set the country’s direction for the next five years, Kim called for stronger conventional armed forces while reaffirming efforts to develop nuclear weapons and missiles. Earlier this month, KCNA showed him opening a new Defence Revolution Museum displaying weapons including the Hwasong-20 intercontinental ballistic missile, and North Korea said on October 12 that it had test-fired a tactical ballistic missile.
Outside assessments place North Korea’s conventional forces well below those of the major powers. The Global Firepower 2026 ranking puts North Korea 31st out of 145 countries, while estimating that it has about 1.32 million active personnel, one of the largest standing forces in the world.
Source: BRICS News on X, KCNA via Reuters and Yonhap, and Global Firepower.
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