North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered the nation’s nuclear arsenal readied for pre-emptive use at any time, in an expected ramping up of rhetoric following the UN Security Council’s adoption of tough new sanctions on Pyongyang.
The North’s nuclear warheads must be deployed “on standby so as to be fired at any moment,” Kim was quoted as saying by the North’s KCNA news agency yesterday.
He also warned that the situation on the divided Korean Peninsula had become so dangerous that the North needed to shift its military strategy to one of “pre-emptive attack.”
Such bellicose rhetoric is almost routine for North Korea at times of elevated tensions.
While the North is known to have a small stockpile of nuclear warheads, experts are divided about its ability to mount them on a working missile delivery system.
Washington downplayed Kim’s threat as posturing.
“We have not seen North Korea test or demonstrate the ability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon and put it on an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile],” a US Department of Defense official told reporters. “Our forces are ready to counter-eliminate strikes if necessary.”
According to KCNA, Kim made his comments while monitoring a test firing of a high-caliber multiple rocket launcher on Thursday, just hours after the UN Security Council unanimously adopted the US-drafted resolution penalizing the North for its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch last month.
The South Korean Ministry of Defense said the North had fired half a dozen rockets about 100km to 150km into the sea off its eastern coast on Thursday.
In a clear threat to South Korea, Kim said the new rocket launcher should be “promptly deployed” along with other “recently developed” weaponry.
In the wake of the “gangster-like” UN resolution pushed by the US and its South Korean ally, North Koreans are now “waiting for an order of combat to annihilate the enemy with their surging wrath,” he added.
The council resolution, adopted late on Wednesday, laid out the toughest sanctions imposed on Pyongyang to date over its nuclear weapons program and will, if implemented effectively, apply significant economic pressure to the Pyongyang regime.
It breaks new ground by sanctioning specific sectors that are crucial to the North Korean economy — such as mineral exports — and seeking to undermine the North’s use of and access to international transport systems.
Kim said that the resolution had opened a “very dangerous phase,” coming just days before the US and South Korea begin annual joint military drills that Pyongyang views as provocative rehearsals for invasion.
The exercises involving tens of thousands of troops are scheduled to begin on Monday.
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