North Korea: Warning from Kim Jung Un’s sister

SEOUL, South Korea –

The powerful sister of North Korea’s leader warned Tuesday that her country was ready to take “swift, overwhelming action” against the United States and South Korea, a day after the nuclear-armed B-52 took off.

The United States flew the bomber to the Korean Peninsula for joint exercises with South Korean warplanes, and allied militaries are also set to revive their largest-ever field exercise later this month.

Kim Yo-yong did not elaborate on the planned actions in his statement, but North Korea frequently tests missiles in response to US-South Korea military exercises, which it views as an attempted invasion.

“We are keeping an eye on the restless military moves of the US forces and the South Korean puppet military and are always ready to take appropriate, swift and repressive action at any time according to our judgment,” Kim Yo-yong said in a statement. by state media.

“The demonstration military moves and all kinds of rhetoric by the U.S. and South Korea, which are so fierce they cannot be ignored, certainly create the conditions (for North Korea) to have to do something to counter them,” he said. : .

Monday’s flight by a B-52 bomber was the latest in a series of U.S.-South Korean air exercises involving powerful U.S. aircraft. The US deployed a long-range American B-1B bomber or several B-1Bs to the peninsula several times earlier this year. South Korea said the drills showed the allies’ ability to respond decisively to possible North Korean aggression.

Last Friday, the militaries of South Korea and the United States announced that they will hold a computer-simulated command and control exercise from March 13 to 23, resuming their largest spring field exercise, which was last held in 2018.

The allies had canceled or scaled back their regular military exercises since 2018 to bolster now-dormant diplomacy with North Korea and protect against the COVID-19 pandemic. But they have been resuming their military exercises after North Korea conducted a record number of missile tests last year and openly threatened to use its nuclear weapons in a possible conflict with its rivals.

In a separate statement on Tuesday, North Korea’s foreign ministry called the US B-52 bomber flight a reckless provocation that pushes the situation on the peninsula “deeper into a bottomless quagmire”. The statement, attributed to an unnamed head of the ministry’s foreign information office, said there was “no guarantee that there would not be a violent physical confrontation” if military provocations between the US and South Korea continued.

North Korea often unleashes fiery rhetoric amid heightened hostilities with the United States and South Korea. Possible moves by North Korea include a nuclear test or the launch of a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile aimed at the continental United States, observers say.

Last month, Kim Yo Jong threatened to turn the Pacific Ocean into a firing line for the North. In a statement on Tuesday, he said North Korea would view a possible US attempt to intercept a North Korean ICBM as a declaration of war. He cited a South Korean media report saying the US military plans to shoot down a North Korean ICBM if it is test-fired into the Pacific Ocean.

All known North Korean ICBM tests have been conducted at a sharp angle to avoid neighboring countries, and the weapons have landed in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.