According to state-run media KCNA on Tuesday, North Korea warned that any attempt to shoot down one of its test missiles would be viewed as a declaration of war and attributed rising tensions to a joint military drill between the US and South Korea. Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement that Pyongyang would consider it as a “declaration of war” if the U.S. took military action against the North’s strategic nuclear tests.
She also made a suggestion that the North might launch additional missiles into the Pacific. Despite the fact that North Korea has threatened to launch additional missiles over Japan, the United States and its allies have never shot down one of its ballistic missiles, which are prohibited by the UN Security Council.
The Pacific Ocean is not within the control of the United States or Japan, according to Kim.
According to analysts, if North Korea follows through on its threat to use the Pacific Ocean as a “shooting range,” it would enable the isolated, nuclear-armed nation to enhance its technology in addition to demonstrating its resolve to use force.
The head of North Korea’s Foreign Ministry’s Foreign Press Division claimed in a separate statement that the U.S. was “aggravating” the situation by arranging field exercises with South Korea and performing a combined air practice with a B-52 bomber on Monday. In response, Pyongyang’s “reckless nuclear and missile development” is to blame for the worsening situation, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which manages relations with the North.
In what South Korea’s defense ministry described as a show of force against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, the United States sent the B-52 bomber to a joint exercise with South Korean fighter jets. The “Freedom Shield” maneuvers, a lengthy military exercise between the two nations, will begin the next week.
According to the Yonhap news agency, U.S. and South Korean jets practiced swift takeoffs on Tuesday as part of a rehearsal in response to North Korean threats to destroy airfields.
The army of North Korea claimed on Tuesday that its adversary fired 30 rounds of artillery from close to the border and demanded an immediate end to such “provocative measures”.
South Korea denied doing so and refuted the assertion. As a result of the 1950–1953 Korean War, which ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty and left the two nations formally at war, there are currently about 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea.
