North Korea vows response to US-South’s nuclear agreement
North Korea vows to respond proportionally to an agreement reached recently between the South and the United States allowing the deployment of American nuclear assets to the Korean Peninsula.
The North issued the warning on Saturday, less than a week after South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and US counterpart Joe Biden agreed on the “regular deployment [to the peninsula] of strategic assets.”
In line with the deal, Biden has pledged to deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in four decades to supposedly defend its ally from, what they claim to be, growing nuclear threats from North Korea.
Reacting to the agreement, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong warned that Pyongyang would strive towards “further perfection” of its nuclear deterrent.
“The more the enemies are dead set on staging nuclear war exercises, and the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right to self-defense will become in direct proportion to them,” she said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The agreement would “only result in making peace and security of Northeast Asia and the world be exposed to more serious danger, and it is an act that can thus never be welcome,” Kim Yo Jong said.
North Korea, which has been under harsh sanctions by the United States and the United Nations Security Council for years over its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs, launched an unprecedented number of missiles in 2022, including its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever.
On March 23, North Korea said it had tested its first underwater nuclear attack drone, and hailed that the weapon was capable of inflicting substantial damage on enemy targets.
Ahead of the test, the North Korean leader urged the enhancement of the country’s nuclear force’s capability to the level of becoming ready for an actual “attack” against the enemy.
