SEOUL (AP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for his military to be constantly ready for combat to thwart its rivals’ plots to invade his country, state media said yesterday, as the United States (US), South Korea and Japan held a trilateral naval exercise to deal with North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats.
The US and South Korean militaries have been separately holding summer bilateral exercises since last week. North Korea views such US-involved training as an invasion rehearsal, though Washington and its partners maintain their drills are defensive.
Kim said in a speech marking the country’s Navy Day on Monday that the waters off the Korean Peninsula have been made unstable “with the danger of a nuclear war” because of US-led hostilities, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
He accused the US of conducting “more frantic” naval drills with its allies and deploying strategic assets in waters around the Korean Peninsula. Kim also cited a recent US-South Korean-Japanese summit where an agreement to boost defence cooperation was reached to counter North Korea’s nuclear programme. Kim called US President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida “the gang bosses” of the three countries.
“The prevailing situation requires our navy to put all its efforts into rounding off the war readiness to maintain the constant combat alertness and get prepared to break the enemy’s will for war in contingency,” Kim said.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed deep regret over Kim’s use of “very rude language” to slander the South Korean, US and Japanese leaders. Spokesperson Lim Soosuk told reporters that North Korea must immediately stop acts that raise tensions with “reckless threats and provocation”.
Yesterday’s South Korean-US-Japanese drills in international waters off South Korea’s southern Jeju island involved naval destroyers from the three countries. The training was aimed at mastering procedures for detecting, tracking and sharing of information about incoming North Korean missiles, South Korea’s navy said in a statement.
The US and South Korean militaries began the 11-day bilateral drills on August 21. The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield training is a computer-simulated command post exercise. But they included field exercises this year.
North Korea typically responds to US-South Korean military drills with its own missile tests.
Last Thursday, its second attempt to launch a spy satellite into space failed. The day the drills began, KCNA said Kim had observed the test-firings of strategic cruise missiles.
Since the beginning of 2022, North Korea has carried out more than 100 weapons tests, many of them involving nuclear-capable missiles designed to strike the US, South Korea and Japan. Many experts say North Korea ultimately wants to use its boosted military capabilities to wrest greater concessions from the US.
The North’s testing spree has forced the US and South Korea to expand their drills, resume trilateral training involving Japan and enhance “regular visibility” of US strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula. In July, the US deployed a nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea for the first time in four decades.
Earlier this month, the leaders of the US, South Korea and Japan held their first-ever stand-alone trilateral summit at Camp David. During the meeting, they announced they intend to put into operation by year’s end the sharing of real-time missile warning data on North Korea and hold annual trilateral exercises.
