“(North Korea) should prepare itself to be able to launch a nuclear attack on enemies on ground, in the air and on and under the sea through diversification of delivery tools of nuclear warheads”, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
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Those sanctions were imposed as a direct result of the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and last month’s space rocket launch, which was seen as a disguised ballistic missile test.
North Korea responded to South Korean unilateral sanctions Thursday by firing short-range ballistic missiles into the sea in a show of defiance and vowing to “liquidate” all remaining South Korean assets at former co-operative projects in the North.
The exercise was clearly a response to ongoing large-scale, South Korea-US military drills that Pyongyang views as provocative rehearsals for invasion. “We reaffirm the Secretary-General’s commitment to work for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula”, Stephane Dujarric said.
It also comes a day after the North released photos of leader Kim Jong Un standing beside what appears to be a nuclear warhead mock-up.
Since the joint drills began Monday, the North has issued daily warnings and statements, talking up its nuclear strike capabilities and threatening to turn Seoul and Washington into “flames and ashes”.
The North has a large stockpile of short-range missiles and is developing long-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In announcing the asset seizure yesterday, the North also warned of other unspecified “special measures” – political, military and economic – it would take against the South in the future, said the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea in a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency. But Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the department was working on USA ballistic missile defences to be prepared.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said Thursday’s missile launches again violated a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions and it would refer the matter to the Council’s sanctions committee mandated to enforce the resolutions. As the KCNA report and accompanying photo are the only evidence proving this claim, it is unclear whether North Korea does possess this technology.
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On Monday, the US and South Korea began their annual joint exercises, the largest to date, which will last until late April involving about 315,000 troops from both the countries. The plant is capable of making weapons-grade plutonium at a level that would allow it to make one nuclear bomb per year.
