North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has increased his appearances at the communist state's missile launches this year in an apparent move to divert his people's attention away from international sanctions, the North's watchers said Sunday, citing government data.

Since the start of the year, Kim has personally observed seven out of 14 launches of intermediate- and short-range missiles, compared with six out of 19 in 2015, according to an analysis by Yonhap News Agency of data obtained from South Korea's Ministry of Unification and North Korea's state media.

Whenever the North's state-controlled media described the missile launches as successful, Kim was always seen celebrating at the scene.

On June 22, North Korean news outlets showed Kim's attendance at the firing of a Hwasong-10, an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). That day, one of the two Musudan missiles flew 400 kilometers and landed in the East Sea. After watching the launch, Kim was quoted as saying by a state-run daily, "We've firmly attained the practical and full-fledged means of offense against the U.S. bandits within the target zones in the Pacific."

Kim also paid a visit to the missile launching sites on April 23, the day when the communist press reported a "major success" in Pyongyang's launch of submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

Kim's increasingly frequent on-site presence in 2016 poses a notable comparison to his first two years after rising to power in 2014.

In 2014, the North launched a total of 19 intermediate- and short-range missiles, but the communist leader attended only six of them. In 2015, he showed up for three of the eight launches.

Some experts point to the possibility that Kim made unreported visits to the missile launches.

"There is the possibility that Kim Jong-un was there for Wednesday's launch of two Rodong missiles, as well as at the past five test fires of the Musudan missiles," said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, a research arm of Kyungnam University.

"The international sanctions against North Korea have influenced Kim's more frequent public appearances at these missile launches. On an implicit level, he is doing this as a form of nuclear-force propaganda to relieve his people's concerns over national security." (Yonhap)