The current port visit by a US nuclear-capable submarine to South Korea, according to North Korea’s defense minister, may satisfy the requirements for Pyongyang to use its nuclear weapons.
As negotiation stalls and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un calls for additional military development, including tactical nuclear weapons, relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest moments ever.
In reaction, the US and South Korea have increased their military showdowns, and this week was the first time since 1981 that a US nuclear-capable submarine visited South Korea.
The landing of a US Ohio-class submarine at Busan harbor, according to Pyongyang’s defense minister Kang Sun Nam, “may fall under the conditions of the use of nuclear weapons specified in the DPRK law on the nuclear force policy.”
Last year, North Korea passed a comprehensive nuclear legislation outlining a variety of possible uses for its nuclear weapons, including possible pre-emptive nuclear strikes if threatened.
Kang said the presence of the sub was an “undisguised and direct nuclear threat to the DPRK”, and meant that “strategic nuclear weapons have been deployed on the Korean peninsula for the first time after 40 odd years”.
“The US military side should realise that its nuclear assets have entered extremely dangerous waters,” he said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of South Korea, paid a visit to the Ohio-class submarine on Wednesday and issued a dire warning to Pyongyang, saying that doing so “will result in the demise of its regime.”
Up to 20 Trident II ballistic missiles can be carried by Ohio-class submarines. Before a submarine heads out to sea, the US Navy normally does not confirm whether it is carrying nuclear weapons.
In order to strengthen their coordinated reaction to any nuclear assault by North Korea, the allies also conducted their first Nuclear Consultative Group meeting on Tuesday in Seoul.
