North Korea continues barrage of threats against the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
North Korea continued a barrage of angry rhetoric today against the United States and South Korea. This followed threats of “pre-emptive” attacks against the United States Thursday in response to increased U.N. sanctions.
A statement from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Friday announced Pyongyang’s intention to nullify the armistice agreement with South Korea as of March 11.
“The U.S. is, however, responding to the DPRK’s good will and self-restraint with large-scale nuclear war maneuvers and the ‘annual’ war drills are developing into a real war. Under this situation the opportunity of diplomatic solution [sic] has disappeared and there remains only military counteraction,” the statement reads.
The most recent round of threats began March 4 in a statement by the KCNA that reads more like a childish angry letter than a government document.
In the statement Kim Yong Il, chief of the Hailin City Branch of the General Association of Koreans in China states, “A touch-and go-situation is now prevailing on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. imperialists and the puppet warmongers had better stop their rash acts.”
While empty threats out of Pyongyang are nothing new, “this one is more precise and perhaps more hysterical than most previous threats coming out of North Korea,” Patrick Cronin, a security analyst with the Center for a New American Security in Washington, told Voice of America (VOA).
U.S. officials have responded by saying that North Korea will gain no advantage by continuing to lash out. Analysts agree that Pyongyang does not have the nuclear capabilities to back up its threats.
“That’s the calculus that’s going on here. It’s not actually about war. It’s about North Korean advantage in an asymmetrical situation where they’re outgunned by the outside powers,” Cronin said, according to VOA.
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