SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called South Korea “our main enemy” and threatened to destroy it if provoked as he continued his inflammatory, bellicose rhetoric against Seoul and the United States ahead of their elections escalated this year.
Kim's threat comes as the White House has said there is evidence that Russia has fired more ballistic missiles provided by North Korea into Ukraine. The United States, South Korea and their partners issued a statement Wednesday condemning both North Korea and Russia over the missile transfer.
Experts say Kim is likely to further escalate hostilities with weapons tests to try to influence the results of South Korea's parliamentary election in April and the U.S. presidential election in November.
During tours of local munitions factories this week, Kim said it was time to define South Korea “as a state most hostile to North Korea” because of a long history of confrontational moves to overthrow North Korea's social system. He said North Korea must subsequently strengthen its nuclear deterrent measures, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said on Wednesday.
If South Korea dares to use its military might against North Korea and threaten its sovereignty, Kim said, according to KCNA, “We will not hesitate to destroy (South Korea) by mobilizing all means and forces in our hands.”
He has recently made similar threats, and analysts say Kim is likely hoping that South Korean liberals seeking reconciliation with North Korea win the April election. They believe Kim also believes he can get the US to make concessions if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House. Kim and Trump met three times in 2018 and 2019 as part of high-risk nuclear diplomacy.
Some observers say possible provocations by North Korea could lead to inadvertent, limited armed clashes between the two Koreas along their heavily armed border.
Last Friday, North Korea fired artillery shells near the disputed western maritime border with South Korea, prompting South Korea to conduct its own firing exercises in the same area in response. South Korea accused North Korea of continuing to conduct artillery drills in the area on Saturday and Sunday, but the North insisted it did not conduct such drills until Sunday.
There have been three bloody naval battles between the two Koreas along the disputed maritime border since 1999, and two attacks attributed to North Korea left 50 South Koreans dead in the region in 2010. Line voltages.
Kim's visit to munitions factories may also be related to North Korea's alleged supply of conventional weapons to Russia to support its war in Ukraine in return for advanced Russian weapons technologies. The factories are likely to include a missile production facility as KCNA said they have implemented the plan to deploy new weapons for large missile units.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that the North Korea-supplied missiles were fired at the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Jan. 6, after the White House declassified U.S. intelligence findings last week that The Russians fired missiles provided by North Korea over Ukraine on January 2nd and December 30th.
Kirby said the U.S. would raise the matter at Wednesday's U.N. Security Council meeting, stressing that the transfer of ballistic missiles from North Korea “directly violates” several U.N. resolutions. Russia, a permanent member of the UN Council, supported these resolutions.
In a joint statement, the top diplomats of 48 countries, including South Korea, the United States and Japan, and the European Union, said they “strongly condemn” North Korea's missile exports and Russia's use of those weapons against Ukraine.
“The transfer of these weapons increases the suffering of the Ukrainian people, supports Russia’s war of aggression and undermines the global non-proliferation regime,” the statement said.
“Russia’s deployment of (North Korean) ballistic missiles in Ukraine also provides valuable technical and military intelligence for (North Korea),” it said. “We are deeply concerned about the security implications of this cooperation in Europe, on the Korean Peninsula, throughout the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.”
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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.
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