Pyongyang, June 6 (KCNA) -- The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and President of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, visited the Destroyer Kang Kon of the Navy of the Korean People's Army, which has entered the shakedown for assessing its capability of executing operations, and observed its navigation test on June 4.

He was accompanied by Jo Chun Ryong, secretary of the Central Committee of the WPK, Kim Jong Sik, first vice department director of the WPK Central Committee, Pak Kwang Sop, commander of the Navy, Pak Jong Chon, advisor to the Ministry of National Defence, Kim Kang Il, vice-minister of National Defence and director of the General Armaments Bureau, Jang Chang Ha, general director of the Missile Administration, Kim Yong Hwan, president of the Academy of Defence Sciences, Kim Myong Son, director of the Armaments Examination Bureau of the Ministry of National Defence, commanding officers of the Navy and senior officials in the field of shipbuilding.

Comrade Kim Jong Un boarded the Destroyer Kang Kon and learned about the actual conditions of various combat duty spaces and elements of the destroyer including the combined control center, the plan for the navigation test and the phased schedule of the test of the warship's weapon systems.

A navigation test was conducted to assess different maneuvering elements of the destroyer with Comrade Kim Jong Un on board the warship.

Comrade Kim Jong Un praised the sailors for their high ability to operate the warship and expressed satisfaction over the cruise and high-speed maneuvering systems of the warship whose maneuverability is very good to meet operational requirements.

Referring to the global trend of the developing shipbuilding industry and the structural features of warship design, he clarified the important tasks for further perfecting the warship control system in our own way so as to meet the requirements for the performance of operational mission of our Navy.

It is possible to deter war and defend peace only when we possess substantial and powerful military muscle capable of exercising military sovereignty in a responsible manner in any space of the ground, the sea and the air, he said, adding this is the invariable view of the WPK and its national defence policy.

In particular, the issue of rapidly developing and strengthening the naval force of the DPRK into a force capable of reliably taking charge of a part of the nuclear war deterrent and into a group that can deal a deadly blow at the enemy any moment under the water or on the water is a matter which the WPK regards as the most important core task in the new five-year national defence development policy, he said.

Comrade Kim Jong Un expressed great trust and expectation that the vast plans for bolstering up the warship force, including the development and production of underwater secret weapons and the building of 10 000-tonnage destroyers under the five-year plan for modernizing the Navy approved by the Ninth Congress of the WPK, would be surely carried out by our reliable and powerful defence science research group, self-supporting shipbuilding industry and competent and intelligent workers in the munitions industry.

He warmly encouraged the officials, scientists and technicians of warship and weapon system research organs, hoping that they will successfully conduct the shakedown for assessing the operational executive capability of the destroyer and put the destroyers Choe Hyon and Kang Kon into commission for the Navy as soon as possible with an honorable sense of obligation and high sense of responsibility. -0-