On Friday, Seoul said to North Korea that using nuclear attacks would indicate the “end” of Kim Jong Un’s regime after Pyongyang endangered nuclear counterattack over increasing US military deployments on the peninsula.
Ties between North Korea and South Korea are at one of their lower ends ever, with the North building up weapons testing as South Korea and the US increase their military alliance.
North Korea’s defence minister warned on Thursday that this week’s port visit of a US submarine to Busan could encounter the legal threshold for the North to operate its nuclear nukes.
North Korea last year embraced a comprehensive nuclear law, developing a collection of scenarios in which it could operate its nuclear weapons, including pre-emptive nuclear strikes if endangered.
As South Korea and the United States have made apparent before, any nuclear attack on the association will encounter a quick, overwhelming and strong response, South Korea’s defence ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Were this to happen the North Korean regime will meet its end, it added.
Washington’s submarine’s port visit is only a legitimate defensive response to North Korea’s continued nuclear hazards, it said.
The visit was settled upon during South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol’s trip to the United States in April when he and US President Joe Biden issued a likewise strict caution to North Korea about the terminal effects of its using nuclear weapons.
Seoul’s statement comes as an American soldier, Travis King, is considered to be in Pyongyang captivity after crossing the border during a tourist trip to the Joint Security Area in the Demilitarised Zone on Tuesday.
North Korea has a long history of imprisoning Americans and using them as bargaining chips in bilateral links. It has not yet given any statement on King.
Declaring his new nuclear regulation last year, Kim Jong Un said the country’s status as a nuclear power was now “irreversible”, effectively eliminating the possibility of denuclearisation talks.
The new nuclear law is imprecise, and claims North Korea could operate its weapons if “an attack by nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction… is judged to draw near”.
Reviewers have said this could be used to explain Pyongyang’s potential nukes usage even in front of customary attacks.
Pyongyang is the only commodity that has embraced the Nuclear Forces Policy Act, which contains unlawful preemptive strikes, the South Korean defense ministry said Friday.
North Korea is also repeating actual preemptive strike exercises and nuclear strike hazards against the South Korea-US alliance, it added.
US and South Korea also carried their first Nuclear Consultative Group meeting in South Korea on Tuesday, to enhance their joint response to any nuclear attack by Pyongyang.
