North Korea claims to have 'successfully' tested a new 'high-tech tactical weapon'

• North Korea's propaganda outlet claimed on Friday that its country successfully carried out a test of a new "high-tech tactical weapon" that met "all superior and powerful designing indicators."
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was said to have visited a test site and inspected the purported weapon.
• High-ranking officials were also said to have attended the event, include Jung Cheon Park, an artillery commissioner.

North Korea's propaganda outlet claimed on Friday that its country successfully carried out tests of a new "high-tech tactical weapon" that met "all superior and powerful designing indicators."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was said to have visited a test site to inspect the purported weapon, according to a Korean Central News Agency statement first reported by South Korean news organization Yonhap News.

"The state-of-the-art weapon that has been long developed under the leadership of our party's dynamic leadership has a meaning of completely safeguarding our territory and significantly improving the combat power of our people's army," KCNA said.

If true, it would be North Korea's first weapons test since Kim and the US President Donald Trump met during a joint summit in Singapore this summer.

North Korea's media reportedly did not mention any specifics of the weapon itself, but did state it had been in development since his father, Kim Jong Il, was in power. High-ranking officials were also said to have attended the event, include Jung Cheon Park, an artillery commissioner.

Read more: Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meet for the first time in historic Singapore summit

The purported weapons test comes shortly after the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was supposed to have met with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Chol, in New York earlier in November. The talks were scrapped abruptly by the North Koreans, according to the State Department. It says that the discussions are ongoing.

Word of the weapons test comes amid the reaffirmation of a potential second summit between Trump and Kim. On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence said Trump plans to meet Kim next year, the second such meeting after the two met in Singapore in June.

"The plans are ongoing," Pence said. "We believe that the summit will likely occur after the first of the year, but the when and the where of that is still being worked out."

Pence added that the meeting would not be predicated on the US's previous demand that North Korea disclose a full list of nuclear arms, but he stressed that the leaders must "come away with a plan for identifying all of the weapons in question."