North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo-jong, yesterday said that a US-South Korean agreement aimed at strengthening deterrence against Pyongyang would lead to “more serious danger,” state media reported.
The US and South Korea this week vowed that North Korea would face a nuclear response and the “end” of the leadership there should it use its own nuclear weapons against the allies, as the two countries’ presidents met in Washington.
In Pyongyang’s first response to the Washington summit, Kim Yo-jong said that the North remained convinced that its nuclear deterrent “should be brought to further perfection.”
Photo: Korean Central News Agency / Korea News Service via AP
“The more the enemies are dead set on staging nuclear war exercises, and the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right to self-defense will become,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency quoted her as saying.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and US President Joe Biden on Wednesday issued the Washington Declaration, bolstering the US nuclear umbrella over South Korea, which is increasingly nervous about Pyongyang’s aggression.
It will involve the “regular deployment of strategic assets” including the first South Korean port visit by a nuclear ballistic submarine in decades, a US official said.
However, the agreement would “only result in making peace and security of Northeast Asia and the world be exposed to more serious danger, and it is an act that can thus never be welcome,” Kim Yo-jong said.
North Korea has defied years of sanctions to continue work on its banned nuclear and missile programs, and last year declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear power, effectively ending the possibility of denuclearization talks.
Pyongyang has conducted a record-breaking string of sanctions-defying launches this year, including test-firing the country’s first solid-fuel ballistic missile — a key technical breakthrough for Kim Jong-un’s military.
Washington and Seoul have ramped up defense cooperation in response, staging joint military exercises with advanced stealth jets and high-profile US strategic assets.
Biden’s criticism of the North is “nonsensical ... from the person in his dotage,” Kim Yo-jong said.
In a further swipe at the 80-year-old Biden’s age, she said that he was “not at all capable of taking the responsibility ... an old man with no future.”
She added it was “too much for him to serve out the two-year remainder of his office term,” before then calling Yoon a “fool.”
Seoul condemned Kim Yo-jong’s “far-fetched” statement.
It “reflects its nervousness and frustration at the drastically strengthened nuclear deterrence of the [South] Korea-US alliance,” the South Korean Ministry of Unification said.
The ministry, which is in charge of inter-Korean relations, added that the statement’s “rude language” demonstrated “the North’s lowly level.”
On Friday, Yoon gave a speech and took questions at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he spoke about the challenges facing his country.
“If we were to accept nuclear weapons by North Korea, then South Korea may have to possess nuclear weapons,” he said during a question-and-answer period after his speech. “This is not something we want to see happen.”
Yoon went on to say that if North Korea were to use nuclear weapons “the result is quite obvious.”
Additional reporting by AP
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
TRAGEDY STRIKES TAIPEI: The suspect died after falling off a building after he threw smoke grenades into Taipei Main Station and went on a killing spree in Zhongshan A 27-year-old suspect allegedly threw smoke grenades in Taipei Main Station and then proceeded to Zhongshan MRT Station in a random killing spree that resulted in the death of the suspect and two other civilians, and seven injured, including one in critical condition, as of press time last night. The suspect, identified as a man surnamed Chang Wen (張文), allegedly began the attack at Taipei Main Station, the Taipei Fire Department said, adding that it received a report at 5:24pm that smoke grenades had been thrown in the station. One man in his 50s was rushed to hospital after a cardiac arrest
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
ON ALERT: Taiwan’s partners would issue warnings if China attempted to use Interpol to target Taiwanese, and the global body has mechanisms to prevent it, an official said China has stationed two to four people specializing in Taiwan affairs at its embassies in several democratic countries to monitor and harass Taiwanese, actions that the host nations would not tolerate, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which asked him and Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to report on potential conflicts in the Taiwan Strait and military preparedness. Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) expressed concern that Beijing has posted personnel from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office to its
RSS