North Korea threatened on Friday to destroy a North American aircraft carrier that arrived in South Korea, at a time of renewed tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
“It is a blatant military provocation that makes the situation irrevocably catastrophic for the United States to persist in introducing various strategic nuclear assets to the Korean Peninsula, where the possibility of an ongoing military clash exists and the danger of a nuclear war is big. The North Korean state news agency KCNA wrote this in an editorial.
On Thursday, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Reagan arrived at the port of Busan, 200 miles southeast of Seoul, accompanied by the strike group, including the destroyer USS Shoup and the guided missile cruiser USS Robert Smalls.
The squadron will remain on site for five days to conduct exchange activities with the South Korean Navy.
The deployment is part of the Pentagon’s so-called extended deterrence commitment to Seoul, which includes the regular and rotating deployment of U.S. strategic assets to respond to the North Korean regime and deter future actions such as testing weapons of mass destruction.
For Pyongyang, the arrival of the aircraft carrier and the strike group “demonstrates that the US plan to carry out a nuclear attack” on North Korea “and its implementation have reached the most serious stage of systematization and visualization and the outbreak of a nuclear war. is now the order of the day.”
The article adds that the allies’ actions have “crossed the red line”: Washington “must understand that its strategic assets have entered extremely dangerous waters” and that North Korea’s “fastest and most powerful attack” will be launched against the means of ‘extended deterrence’. ‘”.
Pyongyang’s message also comes after talks this week in Seoul on the possibility of abandoning a key agreement to reduce military tensions signed in 2018 by the two Koreas in light of what the South is saying to the denounces it as “repeated violations” of the pact in the United States. in recent years in the North.
Following the collapse of denuclearization talks in 2019, tensions on the Korean Peninsula rose again, with Pyongyang rejecting all offers of dialogue and conducting a record number of missile tests, and Seoul and Washington resuming major joint maneuvers and deploying US strategic assets in the region.
Source: DN
