North Korea is expected to spend 16 percent of its budget on national defense in 2013, up 0.2 percentage point from the year before, the country's state media said Tuesday.

According to the Rodong Sinmun, an organ of the North's ruling Workers' Party, Finance Minister Choe Kwang-jin reported to a meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly in Pyongyang on Monday that the money is needed to effectively cope with "indiscriminate" provocations by the United States and its followers.

The paper, however, did not disclose the exact size of the defense budget, although South Korea's unification ministry speculated that last year's military budget totaled US$910 million.

The proportion of the spending plan compared to the overall budget, is the highest tallied since 1998, according to South Korean analysts.

From 1998 through 2002, the North is estimated to have spent 14.4 percent to 14.5 percent of its annual budget on defense, with numbers going up and being fixed at 15.8 percent in the 2007-2012 period, they said.

North Korean watchers in Seoul said that the money may be needed to expand the country's nuclear arsenal and long-range missile systems.

The communist country detonated three nuclear devices in 2006, 2009 and early this year, and successfully launched a long-range rocket that can reach the western United States. (Yonhap News)