North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has identified South Korea as Pyongyang’s “principal enemy” and threatened to annihilate the country if provoked. The tubby tyrant raised his belligerent rhetoric against Seoul and the US ahead of elections this year.
Kim’s threat comes as the White House said it has evidence Russia has fired extra North Korean-provided ballistic missiles at Ukraine. The US, South Korea and their allies issued a statement on Wednesday condemning both North Korea and Russia over the missile transfer.
Experts say Kim is likely to raise animosities further with weapons tests held in a bid to influence the results of South Korea’s parliamentary elections in April and the US presidential election in November.
During tours of munitions factories this week, Kim said it was time to define South Korea as a state “most hostile” towards North Korea because of its long-running confrontational moves to topple the North’s social system.
He said North Korea must bolster its nuclear deterrent, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said on Wednesday (January 10).
If Seoul dares to use military force against North Korea and threaten its sovereignty, Kim said his country will have no hesitation in annihilating South Korea by mobilising all means and forces available to it, according to KCNA.
It is the dictator’s latest threat, with analysts saying Kim likely hopes South Korean liberals seeking reconciliation with North Korea will win the April elections.
They believe Kim also thinks he can win US concessions if Donald Trump returns to the White House. Kim and Trump met three times as part of high-stakes nuclear diplomacy in 2018-19.
Some observers say possible North Korean provocations could trigger accidental, limited armed clashes between the two Koreas along their heavily armed border.
North Korea fired artillery shells near the disputed western sea boundary with South Korea last Friday (January 5), prompting Seoul to trigger its own firing drills in the same area.
South Korea accused its northern neighbour of having continued artillery firing drills in the area on Saturday and Sunday (January 6-7), but the Pyongyang insisted it only carried out such drills on Sunday.
Three bloody naval skirmishes between the Koreas have taken place along the disputed sea boundary since 1999.
Two attacks blamed on North Korea killed 50 South Koreans in the area in 2010. Military firing exercises in the area violate the Koreas’ fragile 2018 agreement to ease front-line tensions.
Kim’s visit to munitions factories could also be linked to North Korea’s alleged supply of conventional arms to Russia to support its war in Ukraine in return for Russian weapons technologies.
The factories likely include a missile-producing facility as KCNA said they carried out the plan for deploying new weapons to major missile units. US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday (January 9) that the North Korea-supplied missiles were fired on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on January 6.
The missile firings also come after the White House last week declassified US intelligence documents that the Russians fired North Korean-provided missiles on Ukraine on January 2 and December 30.
Mr Kirby said the US would raise the matter at Wednesday’s UN Security Council meeting and underscored the transfer of ballistic missiles from North Korea “directly violates” multiple United Nations resolutions. A permanent member of the UN council, Russia had supported those resolutions.
In a joint statement, top diplomats of 48 countries including South Korea, the US, Japan and the European Union said they condemned “in the strongest possible terms” North Korea’s missile exports and Russia’s use of those weapons against Ukraine.
The statement said: “The transfer of these weapons increases the suffering of the Ukrainian people, supports Russia’s war of aggression, and undermines the global non-proliferation regime.
“Russia’s use of (North Korean) ballistic missiles in Ukraine also provides valuable technical and military insights to (North Korea). We are deeply concerned about the security implications that this cooperation has in Europe, on the Korean Peninsula, across the Indo-Pacific region, and around the world.”
