Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, visited the special operations training base under direct control of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army and learned about the training of the sniper and special operation sub-units on August 27.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un was accompanied by Jo Chun Ryong, secretary of the WPK Central Committee, Kim Jong Sik, first deputy department director of the WPK Central Committee, and other leading officials of the WPK Central Committee.

He was greeted on the spot by No Kwang Chol, minister of National Defence of the DPRK, and Ri Yong Gil, chief of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army.

At the training base he met snipers assembled for carrying out special missions and soldiers of the special operations unit and familiarized himself with the military equipment of the sub-units and their training.

He acquainted himself with the new-type sniper rifle being produced and supplied to units.

He appreciated the high-precision long-range sniping character and superiority of the new-type sniper rifle designed and developed by the DPRK Academy of Defence Sciences this year in our own way to improve the ergonomic efficiency of the weapon and the tactical mobility of snipers, and satisfactorily said it is very good for our units to have come to be armed with such sniping weapon of new generation.

Saying that the sniper forces have a very important duty in the combat ability composition of units, he noted that a sniper is a specially selected soldier ready to conduct independent and voluntary military actions and is as good as a hunter surely killing enemy soldiers with perfect marksmanship in battlefields. He added that it is an important task in building up our armed forces to drastically strengthen the special operations forces and specialized sniper forces in the future.

He said that the Central Military Commission of the WPK would examine the matter of organizing a central sniper training centre under the General Staff in the future.

Saying that concentration and acute power of observation are essential qualities for snipers, he noted that they should be trained for discerning varied surroundings and getting used to the environment in order to improve their concentration, endurance and observation, and referred to the need to establish correct training methodologies for making them acquire the methods of selecting the targets of sniping, concealing and moving, selecting and building firing positions and observing targets with various kinds of equipment and ensuring high-precision long-range shooting, and the knacks of marksmanship and the like in attack and defence between the teams of snipers and between sub-units, and to intensify scientific specialized training so as to increase the capability for fighting an actual war.

He instructed the Ministry of National Defence to produce quality camouflage uniforms to be supplied to the sniper sub-units from this year in conformity with the conditions and seasonal characteristics of the mission zones.