N. Korea blasts Iron Mace drills, vows to accelerate nuclear deterrence

North Korea has sharply condemned the Iron Mace nuclear-conventional integration command post exercise conducted by South Korean and US military authorities, using it to once again justify the advancement of its nuclear forces.

According to KCNA on Monday, Kim Jong-sik, first vice director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Korean Workers' Party Central Committee, issued a statement that day denouncing Iron Mace as "the most heinous nuclear war rehearsal aimed entirely at using nuclear weapons against our state."

Kim said Iron Mace, "conducted annually since 2024, is a case that lays bare, without filter, that the United States' ambition to crush us with nuclear weapons remains unchanged and that the level of danger is rising with each passing day."

Kim also took aim at South Korea's annual field maneuver exercise Hoguk, the South Korea-US air force combined exercise Freedom Flag, and the US-Japan combined military exercise Keen Sword. "What the military activities that our enemies have recently been conducting — openly or covertly, and with increasing intensity — clearly indicate is that we must restrain and control our vicious enemies with even more powerful nuclear means," Kim said.

Kim went on to say that North Korea is "full of the capability and confidence to respond to everything," adding that "the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's defense policy of more rapidly accelerating the country's nuclear war deterrence against existing complex threats and prospective threats will not change in the slightest."

It is unusual for a munitions official, rather than North Korea's Defense Ministry or a military authority, to issue a statement on South Korea-US joint military exercises — a move analysts interpret as a deliberate attempt to use the drills as a pretext to justify nuclear development.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff had earlier announced that the Iron Mace CPX was conducted over four days from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2.

Iron Mace has been held annually since 2024 to implement the joint guidelines of the South Korea-US NCG. Under the current administration, the exercise has not been publicly disclosed, in part out of consideration for North Korea's potential backlash.

Kim had overseen a "combat applicability and effectiveness evaluation test of tactical ballistic missile cluster munition warheads" by North Korea's Missile General Bureau on Saturday. The Ballistic Missile System Research Institute and the Warhead Research Institute announced the test results, claiming that a "Type 2 standard cluster warhead can devastate a target zone of 12 to 13 jeongbo (approximately 11.9 to 12.9 hectares) with overwhelming density."

At an unmanned aerial technology exhibition attended by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Thursday, Pyongyang also unveiled firing of a 600-millimeter super-large multiple rocket launcher named "Sniper" and staged a drone attack on mock targets modeled after South Korean frontline guard posts. Kim told the gathering that "strength is peace, and peace is guaranteed only by strength."