North Korea Sunday hailed the strength of its military after it launched a salvo of ballistic missiles in a show of firepower that earned international criticism. “Thanks to the army-first policy of our party, our defense industry… laid a firm foundation to produce any kind of (weapons) needed for modern warfare freely,” the ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in a commentary.
The army-first policy of the communist country has given the military the capacity to hit enemies with a “merciless” strike, it added.

The comments from North Korea came a day after it test-fired seven ballistic missiles in an act of defiance apparently timed for the US Independence Day holiday.

The launches further fuelled regional tensions after Pyongyang’s nuclear test in May. Professor Kim Yong-Hyun of Seoul’s Dongguk University said the launches were designed to demonstrate the country’s improved missile capacity. “The weekend sabre-rattling, apparently designed to demonstrate the country’s improved missile capacity and military firepower, produced its intended effect,” he said.

It also sent a strong warning to the United States that North Korean missiles could pose a serious challenge to regional peace, he said. Washington’s relatively mild reaction showed US officials do not want “a catastrophic confrontation with North Korea or heightened regional tensions,” he added.

Saturday’s tests brought a new round of verbal condemnation from diplomats and politicians in neighboring countries, the U.S., France, Israel and Australia. China, North Korea’s closest ally and chief economic benefactor, urged “calm and restraint,” the lesser of the two types of criticisms its foreign ministry usually issues after North Korean provocations. The U.S. State Department urged North Korea to “refrain from actions that aggravate tensions and return to denuclearization talks.”

Defense analysts in several countries, including the U.S. and South Korea, will take several weeks to determine whether Saturday’s tests showed that North Korea is advancing its ability to carry nuclear warheads on those missiles.

Military and intelligence analysts in the U.S. and elsewhere several weeks ago tracked movement of long-range missiles to launchpads in North Korea and, for a time, prepared for the prospect that it would launch such a missile on July 4 or 5, as it did in 2006. Over the past two weeks, however, they detected no signs of further preparations for such a launch.