North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un guided a live-shell firing exercise by a front-line military unit, the North’s media reported Tuesday, one day after it fired about 100 artillery shells into waters near its eastern sea border with the South.

Before midday Monday, the North conducted a live-fire drill, launching about 100 artillery shells into north of the East Sea border, the latest in a recent series of provocative rocket and missile launches.

“During the guidance of the live-shell firing exercise of the Korean People’s Army Unit 171, Kim oversaw the deployment of multiple launch rocket systems and issued an order to open fire,” the Korean Central News Agency said in an English dispatch.

After the shells were fired into the sea, Kim watched columns of water rising in succession and said with great satisfaction “that the artillerymen are very good at firing, and all of them are crack shots,” the KCNA noted.

The North Korean leader also ordered heightened combat readiness of the military servicemen during the guidance visit, the KCNA said.

“He stressed that he came to be convinced once again that all service personnel were only waiting for an offensive order from the supreme commander while keeping themselves highly alerted.”

“He said that the hostile forces are now getting more undisguised in their moves to isolate and stifle the socialist country, but the Korean people can dynamically push forward the building of a thriving nation as the service personnel are defending the posts of the country as firm as an iron wall with ardent patriotism,” according to the state news media.

The military’s top political officer, Hwang Pyong-so and Army Gen. Ri Yong-gil, as well as other high-rank military officials, accompanied Kim to the visit as they often do, according to the KCNA.

North Korea has recently taken a series of fence-mending gestures toward Seoul, suggesting a stop to cross-border military hostilities and agreeing to hold inter-Korean talks over its plan to send athletes and cheerleaders to the Asian Games to be held in the South later in the year.

But the socialist country has also simultaneously ramped up military provocations near the border in recent months, heightening military tensions on the Korean Peninsula. (Yonhap)