North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has unveiled plans to build two large warships each year over the next five years ¡ª while outfitting his navy with nuclear weapons ¡ª but questions remain over the effectiveness of the move.

At a ceremony for the commissioning of the 5,000-ton Choe Hyon destroyer, Kim called for his country to ¡°launch 10,000-ton strategic warships one after another,¡± the official Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday. Pyongyang often used the term ¡°strategic¡± to reference its nuclear weapons capabilities.?

At the ceremony, which took place Tuesday, Kim said the North Korean Navy was ¡°entering a new phase of its development¡± and has assumed ¡°a new historic mission.¡±

¡°In the new five-year plan period, we should correctly implement all the plans for building up our naval capability; we should build every year two surface ships, whose class is higher than the Choe Hyon, including 10,000-ton cruiser(s),¡± Kim said in a speech, adding that the North should also build escort ships and ¡°ships of special purposes,¡±? while developing underwater weapons systems and constructing new naval bases.

Doing so, he said, would make the nuclear-armed country ¡°a defense leader capable of fully demonstrating its national strength in the ocean thousands of miles away.¡±

The North Korean leader has made modernizing his navy a key tenet of an ongoing push to build out not only his missile and nuclear weapons arsenal, but conventional aspects of his military as well.

Still, nuclear weapons loomed large in Kim¡¯s speech, with the leader hailing the move to equip the navy with the weapons as ¡°following its planned course unerringly.¡±

¡°This is a strategic course of crucial importance as it will make it possible to keep the nuclear force of our state ready for multifaceted and efficient operation,¡± he added.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said Kim¡¯s ¡°naval nationalism¡± is worrying because it shows he attaches regime legitimacy to long-term military competition with South Korea rather than to Seoul¡¯s preferred path of economic cooperation and diplomatic reconciliation.?

¡°Moreover, if Pyongyang becomes overly confident in its nuclear deterrent, it might engage in maritime provocations with a sense of impunity, raising the risk of miscalculation in the West Sea,¡± he added, using the South Korean name for the Yellow Sea.

In an unusual acknowledgement, Kim also conceded that the navy ¡°was the weakest of all the services¡± in his country¡¯s armed forces, saying that ¡°it is no exaggeration to say that modernization of the navy started virtually from scratch.¡±

Pyongyang has long been known to embellish its military capabilities, altering photographs of weapons tests and carrying out massive parades featuring new weapons that, upon close analysis, have been...