SEOUL, South Korea: In a robust display of its military stance, North Korea vehemently criticized the recent arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in South Korea on Friday.
Labelling the deployment a provocation, North Korea once again raised the spectre of utilizing nuclear weapons to defend itself.
Buoyed by its advancing nuclear arsenal, North Korea has increasingly issued threats of using such weapons preemptively. Despite this, experts suggest that North Korea is unlikely to employ its nuclear weapons as a first strike, given the military superiority of U.S. and South Korean forces. Nevertheless, North Korea continues to enhance its nuclear capabilities and refrain from returning to diplomatic negotiations at the present moment.
The recent nuclear threat from North Korea emerged shortly after the USS Ronald Reagan and its battle group docked at South Korea’s southeastern port of Busan, following a joint U.S.-South Korean-Japanese naval exercise held in international waters earlier in the week. South Korean defense officials clarified that the carrier would remain stationed at Busan for five days, in accordance with an agreement to bolster temporary deployments of powerful U.S. military assets, a response to North Korea’s escalating nuclear program.
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In an official statement, North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) labelled the arrival of the aircraft carrier as “an undisguised military provocation,” suggesting that it demonstrated the realization of a U.S. plan to attack North Korea. The statement further conveyed a threat in line with North Korea’s escalatory nuclear doctrine, authorizing the preemptive use of nuclear weapons.
The KCNA dispatch emphasized, “The (North Korean) doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons already opened to the public allows the execution of necessary action procedures in case a nuclear attack is launched against it or it is judged that the use of nuclear weapons against it is imminent.”
Furthermore, North Korea stressed that its “most powerful and rapid first strike will be given to the ‘extended deterrence’ means used by the U.S. to influence its followers and the bases of evil in the Korean peninsula and its vicinity.”
North Korea has consistently argued that it was compelled to develop nuclear weapons as a response to what it perceives as U.S. and South Korean plots to invade. The nation has frequently reacted vehemently to the deployment of U.S. strategic assets such as aircraft carriers, long-range bombers, nuclear-powered submarines, and joint training exercises between the U.S. and South Korea.
