North Korea’s Kim calls for rapid nuclear buildup

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country needed to rapidly expand its nuclear armament and called U.S.-South Korea military exercises an “obvious expression of their will to provoke war,” state media KCNA reported on Tuesday. South Korea and its ally the United States kicked off joint military drills this week, including testing an upgraded response to heightened North Korean nuclear threats. Pyongyang regularly criticises such drills as rehearsals for invasion and sometimes responds with weapons tests, but Seoul and Washington say they are purely defensive.