Sawt Falasteen - North Korea to deploy new artillery along border with South

Despite peace overtures from the South Korean government, the North has repeatedly cast Seoul as its main adversary, and recently removed longstanding references to Korean unification from its constitution.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a munitions factory this week to review production of a "new-type 155-millimetre self-propelled gun-howitzer", the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

The weapon has a range exceeding 60 kilometres (37 miles) and will be deployed this year to a long-range artillery unit along the border with South Korea, according to KCNA.

Central Seoul lies around 50 to 60 kilometres from the frontier, and much of Gyeonggi province -- South Korea's most populous, home to key industrial hubs -- would also fall within range.

The howitzer will "provide significant changes and advantages to our military's ground operations", KCNA reported Kim as saying.

North and South Korea remain technically at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

In recent years, Pyongyang has blown up roads and railways linking it with the South, and purportedly built barriers near the border.

In another sign of its hardening stance, North Korea deleted all references to uniting the divided peninsula from its constitution, an AFP review of the latest version this week showed.

The document no longer contains a clause saying Pyongyang seeks "the reunification of the homeland", and includes a new one defining North Korea's territory as extending northwards to China and Russia, and southwards to the "Republic of Korea", the South's official name.

South Korea's presidential office said on Thursday that it would continue to pursue peace efforts with the North.

In a separate report, KCNA said Kim visited the 5,000-ton destroyer Choe Hyon on Thursday to oversee handling tests ahead of its formal deployment.

Images carried by state media showed his daughter, Ju Ae, accompanying him on his visit to the Yellow Sea, where he boarded the warship and examined its capabilities.

Another photo showed a grinning Kim sitting with Ju Ae at a table in the ship's mess hall, surrounded by uniformed marines eating instant rice meals.

North Korea has recently staged strategic cruise missile launches from the Choe Hyon, which analysts believe could be equipped to carry nuclear warheads.

Kim voiced satisfaction with the vessel's progress and instructed officials to hand it over to the navy by mid-June as planned, KCNA said.

B.Mahmoud--SF-PST