South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Friday that the arrival of a US nuclear-capable submarine in the country was “a legitimate defensive response” to North Korea’s weapons tests.
Seoul’s message comes after North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun-nam declared on Thursday that the arrival of the USS Kentucky submarine is “a direct nuclear threat” and the Nuclear Advisory Council (NCG) meeting for its acronym in English) discussed Wednesday “plans to use nuclear weapons. against North Korea.
“North Korea misrepresented and criticized the purpose of the NCG meeting held between the ROK [nome oficial da Coreia do Sul] and the United States, and the arrival of the American strategic nuclear submarine,” the South Korean Defense Ministry responded in a statement.
The scale of the submarine and the meeting “does not constitute a conspiracy to use nuclear weapons or a nuclear threat against North Korea” and is “a legitimate defensive response by the alliance against North Korea’s continuing nuclear and missile threats,” it said. . same note.
The shipment of the USS Kentucky, the first arrival of a submarine of this category to the peninsula since 1981, and the creation of the NCG are a response to the declaration signed in April between the US and South Korea, in which Washington pledged to reinforce the so-called “extended deterrence”, a mechanism to protect the ally and discourage Pyongyang from developing weapons of mass destruction.
The North Korean minister added in a statement that the deployment of the submarine and other US strategic assets could fall under the “conditions for the use of nuclear weapons specified by law” that North Korea approved last September to regulate the country’s atomic arsenal.
Faced with this threat, South Korea insisted that “the North Korean regime will face the end” if there is “any nuclear attack against the alliance” between Seoul and Washington.
Following the failure of 2019 denuclearization talks, tensions have risen on the Korean peninsula, with Pyongyang refusing any offer of dialogue and conducting a record number of missile tests.
Seoul and Washington, in turn, have resumed large-scale joint exercises, regularly deploying strategic US assets to the region.
Source: TSF
