North Korea Vows ‘Toughest Reaction’ Possible After US Military Pledges More Weapons to Peninsula
04:16 GMT 02.02.2023 (Updated: 13:37 GMT 18.09.2023)
© AP Photo / Ahn Young-joonA TV screen shows a file image of North Korea's missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022. South Korea says it has issued an air raid alert for residents on an island off its eastern coast after North Korea fired a few missiles toward the sea
© AP Photo / Ahn Young-joon
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After the US Defense Secretary promised to beef up South Korean military capabilities, North Korean officials have pledged an especially harsh response in the event of a US attack.
The North Korean government has pledged it will respond with the “toughest possible” measures to any US military provocation against the country, after the US pledged to deploy more weapons to the Korean peninsula.
Following recent “reckless military confrontational maneuvers and hostile acts of the US and its vassal forces,” the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Thursday that the Biden regime brought the “military and political situation on the Korean peninsula and in the region” to an “extreme red line.”
“The US is going to ignite an all-out showdown with the DPRK,” officials there said, citing the intimidating new war games the US is set to hold along with the South Korean regime in February – including a "drill for operating extended deterrence" and the “largest-ever field mobile live shell firing drill simulating the use of nuclear weapons.”
As North Korean authorities noted, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with his counterpart in South Korea Tuesday amid an ongoing tour of the Pacific.
“During the visit to South Korea on January 31, the US Defense Secretary openly declared that the US would deploy more strategic assets such as the fifth generation stealth fighters and nuclear carriers,” and he spoke “unhesitatingly” about the potential deployment of nuclear weapons against their country, they said.
This “vivid expression” of the US brinkmanship will “result in turning the Korean peninsula into a huge war arsenal and a more critical war zone,” per DPRK officials.
With North Koreans now “seeing through the true intention of the US,” officials point out that “the DPRK has a clear counteraction strategy,” which they note is “capable of coping with any short- and long-term scheme implemented by the US and its vassal forces.”
Officials underscored that it “will strongly control the present and future potential challenges with the most overwhelming nuclear force.”
“If the US continues to introduce strategic assets into the Korean peninsula and its surrounding area, the DPRK will make clearer its deterring activities without fail according to their nature,” they promised.
As it stands, the DPRK is “not interested in any contact or dialogue with the US” as long as it continues to pursue what the North Korean government condemned as a “hostile policy and confrontational line.”
For now, “the escalating tension on the Korean peninsula and in the region is entirely attributable to the hostile policy of the US,” they say, given that Washington is forcing the DPRK to “disarm itself unilaterally by means of sanctions and military pressure” while it “pursues the military expansion of its allies.”
“The decades-long history of the DPRK-US confrontation shows that the DPRK should deal with the US imperialists by force only, as they are dreaming of disarming the DPRK and bringing down its social system with the 'end' of the DPRK set as a goal of their state administration,” the statement noted.
Officials concluded: “The more dangerous the US threat to the DPRK gets, the stronger backfire the US will face in direct proportion to it.”