The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader says her country will make a more provocative display of its military might in response to a new US-South Korean deal to intensify nuclear deterrence to counter the North’s nuclear threat. She insists that they have an “extreme” enmity. Pyongyang.
Kim Yo Jong also lobbed personal insults at US President Joe Biden, who said on Wednesday after a summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol that any North Korean nuclear strike on the US or its allies would result in “who Any rule will end” such action.
Biden’s meeting with Yoon in Washington comes amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, as the pace of both North Korea’s weapons display and joint US-South Korea military drills has increased in a tit-for-tat cycle.
Since the beginning of 2022, North Korea has conducted nearly 100 missile tests, including several demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the US mainland and the North in the form of simulated nuclear attacks on South Korea. Also included is the described short range launching.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is expected to move widely in the coming weeks or months as he seeks to consolidate the North’s status as a nuclear power and eventually negotiate US economic and security concessions from a position of strength. Continues to accelerate a campaign with purpose.
During their summit, Biden and Yoon announced new nuclear deterrence efforts, calling for US nuclear-armed submarines to periodically dock in South Korea for the first time in decades and strengthening training between the two countries. Are. They also committed to a plan for bilateral presidential consultations in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, the establishment of a nuclear advisory group, and improving information sharing on nuclear and strategic weapons operational plans.
In her comments published on state media, Kim Yo Jong said the US-South Korean deal reflected the allies’ “most hostile and aggressive actions” against the North and pushed regional peace and security into a “more serious threat”.
Kim, who is one of his brother’s top foreign policy officials, said the summit further strengthened the North’s conviction in boosting its nuclear weapons capabilities. He added that it would be especially important for the North to fulfill “the second mission of nuclear war deterrence”, in an apparent reference to the country’s growing nuclear doctrine that calls for preemptive nuclear strikes on a wide range of scenarios where it could use its can experience. Leadership is in danger.
She lashed out at Biden over his blunt warning that a North Korean nuclear attack would result in the end of his regime, calling him old and “very wrong and irresponsibly brave”. However, she added that the reply would not simply dismiss her words as a “nonsense remark from the person in his dotage.”
“When we consider that this expression was used personally by the President of the United States, our most hostile adversary, it is threatening rhetoric for which he should prepare for a much greater storm,” she said. Said.
“The more dead the enemy is to practice nuclear warfare, and the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right to self-defense.”
She called Yun a “foolish” over his efforts to strengthen South Korea’s defense with its alliance with the United States and strengthen the South’s own conventional missile capabilities, adding that he was only willing to receive “nominal” promises. Despite this, he was keeping his full faith in America. in return.
“The pipe dream of the US and (South) Korea will now be confronted with an even more formidable force,” he said.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, dismissed his comments as “absurd” and insisted they expressed the North’s “bewilderment and frustration” over the allies’ efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrence. .
Kim Yo Jong’s comments towards Biden were reminiscent of the time her brother called former US President Donald Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard” while they exchanged verbal threats during a North Korean trial in 2017. including flight tests of ICBMs and the North’s sixth nuclear test. ,
Kim Jong Un later turned to diplomacy and held his first summit with Trump in Singapore in June 2018, where he issued an ambitious goal for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without specifying when or how it would happen.
But his diplomacy never recovered from the fallout of their second summit in Vietnam in February 2019, where the Americans rejected North Korea’s demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a limited surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
Kim Yo Jong did not specify the actions North plans to take in response to the outcome of the US-South Korea summit.
Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said the North would dial down military exercises involving its so-called nuclear-capable missiles to demonstrate its ability to hit. He said the North could also test submarine-launched ballistic missile systems in response to US plans to send nuclear-armed submarines to the South.
Kim Jong Un said this month that the country has built its first military spy satellite, which will be launched at an unspecified date. The launch will almost certainly be seen by its rivals as a restricted test of long-range missile technology.
In March, he asked his nuclear scientists to ramp up production of weapons-grade material to build warheads on their growing range of nuclear-capable missiles, as the North revealed a new warhead that could possibly be a nuclear warhead. Was designed to fit on variety. of distribution systems. It raised questions about whether the North was getting closer to its next nuclear test, which US and South Korean officials had been predicting for months.
North Korea has long described the United States’ regular military exercises with South Korea as invasion rehearsals, although the allies describe those drills as defensive. Many experts say Kim potentially uses his rivals’ military drills as a pretext to advance his weapons programs and strengthen his domestic leadership amid economic troubles.
Faced with growing North Korean threats, Yoon is seeking strong assurances from the United States that it will swiftly and decisively use its nuclear weapons if the South comes under North Korean nuclear attack.
His government is also expanding military training with the US, including last month the allies’ largest field exercise in years and separate drills involving US aircraft carrier battle groups and advanced warplanes, including nuclear-capable B- 52 bombers and the F-35. fighter jets.
read all Breaking News Here
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)