A statement by the DPRK army’s General Staff called the military drill a clear provocation. “And last week, South Korean officials announced North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom has defected to South Korea”.
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North Korean forces are “ready to mount a pre-emptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulchi Freedom Guardian”, he said, referring to the exercise by its official name.
It’s not the first time that Pyongyang has threatened nuclear retaliation over U.S.
In response to the start of annual military drills involving the US and South Korea, North Korea threatened to turn Seoul and Washington into “a heap of ashes with a pre-emptive nuclear strike” – if they showed any signs of aggression toward the North’s territory. -South Korean drills. As The Two-Way has reported, North Korea warned of a “pre-emptive nuclear strike of justice” during military exercises in March.
North Korea urged its young people to pledge allegiance to leader Kim Jong-un three days before a rare youth congress, a state-run daily said Tuesday, as the country moves to solidify its one-man rule through support from the youth. Of the US troops, about 2,500 participants were already based in South Korea.
The annual drills routinely anger Pyongyang, which says it sees the drills as a rehearsal for a full-scale invasion of the North, despite insistence by Seoul and Washington that the drills are purely defensive in nature. Making note the IAEA’s assessment, South Korea’s foreign ministry said Tuesday it strongly condemns North Korea’s nuclear development, reiterating that it goes strictly against worldwide security, peace and the global commitment to nonproliferation.
North Korea frequently makes such threats but tensions on the peninsula have been inflamed by the defection of a high-ranking Pyongyang diplomat.
Experts are divided over how many warheads North Korea has in its possession, and how far its missiles would be capable of delivering those warheads. Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon Hee said Thae told South Korean officials that he defected because of his disillusionment with Kim’s regime.
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed North Korea resumed plutonium production in 2016, a move Seoul condemned on Monday, according to News 1.
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The daily, an organ of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, said that Kim Jong-un’s belief in the youth is like a “fireball of affection” and added the heroic biography of Korean youth will continue endlessly.
