People sit in front of a television screen showing a news broadcast with file footage of a North Korean missile test, at a train station in Seoul on January 4, 2026.
| Photo Credit: FP

Seoul:

North Korean state media on Wednesday said around 1.4 million young people including students and youth league officials joined or returned to the army this week.

The young people are determined to fight in a “sacred war of destroying the enemy with the arms of the revolution,” the KCNA report said.

North Korea’s claim of having over one million young people enlisting in the country’s Korean People’s Army in just two days comes at a time when tensions in the Korean peninsula are running high.

Last year, North Korean media made a similar claim of its citizens volunteering to join the military to fight against the United States.

North Korea blew up sections of inter-Korean roads and rail lines on its side of the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas on Tuesday, prompting South Korea’s military to fire warning shots.

Pyongyang has also accused Seoul of sending drones over the North Korean capital and the two Koreas have clashed over balloons of trash floated since May from North Korea. Pyongyang has said the launches are a response to balloons sent by anti-regime activists in the South.

“If a war breaks out, the ROK will be wiped off the map. As it wants a war, we are willing to put an end to its existence,” the KCNA report said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Seoul:

 Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said the country will continue to build overwhelming and the strongest military power to protect its sovereignty and regional peace, the North’s KCNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

Kim said a series of military exercises by the U.S. military in the region this year starting with live-fire drills conducted with the “South Korean puppet military gangsters” are driving the regional security environment into a dangerous turmoil.

“We will continue to build overwhelming and the most powerful military power to safeguard our sovereignty, security and regional peace,” KCNA quoted her as saying.

The U.S. and South Korean militaries have been conducted a range of drills with greater scale and intensity in recent months under a pledge by the two countries’ leaders to upgrade military readiness against North Korea’s military threats.

About 100 military aircraft conducted two-week-long aerial drills this month, according to South Korea’s military.

North Korea says U.S. military exercises are preparations for a nuclear war against it. Washington and Seoul say the drills are defensive in nature and regularly conducted to maintain readiness.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)