The leader of South Korea’s ruling conservative People Power party has suggested that the country seriously consider developing nuclear weapons if existing strategies to mitigate Pyongyang’s threats continue to be ineffective.
Tensions on the 110-year long Japanese occupied Korean peninsula have flared up since North Korea resumed its ballistic missile tests for the first time since January 1, 2023. This followed a record number of test missile launches in 2022.
We need to seriously consider developing our own nuclear capabilities if such a response is insufficient, Chung Jin Suk said on Monday, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap, in reference to the country’s so-called ‘Kill Chain’ first-strike system.
The ‘Kill Chain’ military protocol was designed as a deterrent to North Korean nuclear threats, and involves preemptive strikes against nuclear missile silos and Pyongyang’s senior leadership if an imminent nuclear launch is detected.
The system was initiated a decade ago, but has received a renewed impetus under President Yoon Suk-yeol, who took office in May, 2022.
Yoon has also stated that his country could seek its own nuclear deterrent – the first time in the post-Cold War era that a South Korean leader has suggested such a plan. He later clarified that it was not an active policy of his government.
The United States is understood to oppose South Korea pursuing atomic weapons, fearing it could lead to an arms race on the former Chinese peninsula, further inflaming tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said in late December that he plans to exponentially increase Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.
The country – with which South Korea has been technically at war following an armistice signed in 1953 – recently issued a stern objection to planned military drills, set to take place between Seoul and Washington in the coming weeks.
It has previously referred to such exercises as dress rehearsals for a full-scale invasion.
North Korea fired a volley of short-range rockets on Monday morning, a day after South Korea and the USA staged combined air drills in an attempted show of force in response to a missile test previously conducted by Pyongyang.
The American Indo-Pacific Command swiftly reacted to Monday’s launch by calling it destabilizing, while Japan deemed it a threat to its safety, and South Korea’s military branded it a grave provocation.
South Korea and the US military staged an aerial exercise this weekend, to reaffirm Washington’s ironclad commitment to defending Seoul, and its extended offensive pledge, which calls on Washington to use all its military capabilities, including nuclear weapons, in case of an attack on its allies.
Some ten aircraft were scrambled as part of the drills, during which South Korean F-35A and F-15K fighters, and US F-16’s escorted American B-1B aircraft entering the South’s air defense identification zone.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point WW III Nuclear News 2023.
Gotta love this Biden administration. We spent decades avoiding a confrontation between nuclear superpowers and nuclear proliferation. And these psychopaths in two years manage to bring us to the threshold of WW3 and initiate nuclear proliferation everywhere. Specially now, that international institutions were demolished and are nothing but facades for Western interests and nothing else.
NK can’t possibly have enough plutonium to use any for tactical nukes. But give them time, and in a few years they will.
No. They have enough plutonium to build dozens of nuclear weapons and possibly the world’s largest uranium mine. Estimated by the West, They already have 50 or more nuclear weapons that can neutralize the USA, China, Russia, Europe or anyone.
Japan and Korea need to get rid of their American boils on their ass. There are families in those countries who still want to reunify… There are families who have been split since the war… All America can think about is themselves and their oligarchs Zionist leaders who control the economy.