North Korea will work faster to improve its pre-emptive strike capabilities, said Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, as she criticized South Korea for proceeding with military exercises with the US, saying yesterday that they are an invasion rehearsal.
Kim Yo-jong’s statement came after South Korean media reported the allied militaries were to begin four days of preliminary training before holding computer-simulated drills from Monday next week to Aug. 26.
Kim Yo-jong said she was delegated authority to release the statement, implying that the message came directly from her brother.
She described the South’s decision to hold joint exercises despite earlier warnings by the North as “perfidious behavior” that will push the allies into facing a “more serious security threat.”
Continuing the drills exposed the hypocrisy of offers from the administration of US President Joe Biden to resume dialogue over the North’s nuclear weapons program, she said.
There will not be stabilized peace on the Korean Peninsula unless the US withdraws its troops and weapons in the South, she said.
Pyongyang will “put more spur to further increasing the deterrent of absolute capacity to cope with the ever-growing military threats from the US,” including its capabilities for national defense and “powerful” pre-emptive strikes for “rapidly countering any military actions against us,” she said.
The drills “are the most vivid expression of the US hostile policy towards the DPRK, designed to stifle our state by force, and an unwelcoming act of self-destruction for which a dear price should be paid as they threaten the safety of our people and further imperil the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim Yo-jong said, using the initials of the country’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “For peace to settle on the peninsula, it is imperative for the US to withdraw its aggression troops and war hardware deployed in [South] Korea. As long as the US forces stay in [South] Korea, the root cause for the periodic aggravation of the situation on the Korean Peninsula will never vanish.”
It was not immediately clear whether North Korea’s threat to advance its pre-emptive strike capabilities signaled a resumption of testing activity.
The North in March ended a year-long pause in ballistic tests by firing two short-range missiles into the sea, continuing a tradition of testing new US administrations with weapons demonstrations and other provocations apparently aimed at measuring Washington’s response and wresting concessions.
However, North Korea has not conducted any known test launches since then.
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