Kim Jong-un urges North Korea's ‘combat readiness’ ahead of US-South Korea drills

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has urged the army to ensure its combat readiness ahead of US-South Korea military exercises that see an annual spike in tensions on the divided peninsula.

In a “historic” speech to the ruling party’s Central Military Commission (CMC), Kim said the army had to be “fully ready to react to any form of war to be ignited by the enemy,” state media said on Monday.

The CMC meeting followed on the heels of a North Korean military drill – personally overseen by Kim – that simulated an attack on a frontline South Korean island.

Participating in the drill were artillery units that shelled the South’s Yeonpyeong island in 2010, killing four people and briefly triggering concerns of a full-scale conflict.

Stressing the need for the Korean People’s Army (KPA) to “focus all its efforts on rounding off combat readiness,” Kim spoke of the need to simplify and reorganise the KPA “machinery,” the official KCNA news agency said without elaborating.

The report said the commission also discussed a “radical turn” in national defence operations, but again there were no details.

North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests, and recently threatened a fourth, amid tensions over fresh US sanctions and UN moves to censure Pyongyang for its human rights record.