North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country has miniaturised nuclear warheads to mount on ballistic missiles, state media reported on Wednesday, and called on his military to be prepared to mount pre-emptive attacks against the United States and South Korea.
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After it launched the missiles on Thursday, the North also announced it would “liquidate” remaining South Korean assets left in a joint industrial zone on the border between the two countries.
The World Health Organization says 20 in every 100,000 North Koreans died of tuberculosis in 2014, more than five times the rate of South Korea.
The North said it will “liquidate” South Korean assets at the closed Kaesong factory park and the scrapped tourism resort at Diamond Mountain.
The statement said Pyongyang will also take a series of steps to slap “lethal” military, political and economic blows on Seoul.
Kim claimed that Pyongyang had managed to construct a miniature warhead that can be fitted onto a ballistic missile. The South tracked the projectiles and is monitoring the situation, it said.
In response to the miniaturisation claims, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said of Kim Jong-un that “the young man needs to pay more attention to the North Korean people and taking care of them, than in pursuing these sorts of reckless capabilities ” .
The claim directly countered fresh skepticism presented by U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh hours earlier, when he told reporters that he did not believe the North to be “at that stage yet” . It is located to the north of the demilitarized zone separating the Korean Peninsula in two parts since the signing of an armistice agreement after the 1950-1953 war.
Chinese authorities have notified Beijing Capital International Airport of a list of North Korean individuals who are blacklisted by new United Nations sanctions for their involvement in the North’s weapons program, a source with knowledge of the issue said Thursday.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have been growing since Pyongyang’s announcement that it had successfully conducted a nuclear test on January 6.
The North Korean statement also criticized the recently passed South Korean sanctions, which targeted a total of 34 organizations and 43 individuals affiliated with the North Korean economy and transport of weapons of mass-destruction (WMD).
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