Seoul | North Korean state media on Wednesday described upcoming visits to Seoul by U.S. diplomatic and defense chiefs as “provocative” actions that would likely increase tensions in the region.
American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to arrive late Wednesday and meet with his South Korean counterpart Park Jin the next day, particularly to discuss North Korea, a country with nuclear weapons.
His two-day trip will be followed next week by a visit by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to the South Korean capital for ministerial-level meetings.
“Uninvited guests from across the ocean will seek extreme confrontations on the Korean peninsula, which is the world’s largest trouble spot and on the verge of an explosion,” said a commentary by the official KCNA agency.
“This provocative act is reminiscent of the warmongers’ field inspection visits at the beginning of the Second Korean War” in 1950, the commentary continued.
The visits of MM. Blinken and Lloyd would bring “new clouds of war” to the region, this text criticizes.
The trips come as Seoul and Washington step up defense cooperation amid Pyongyang’s record series of weapons tests this year.
In October, a U.S. nuclear-capable B-52 bomber made a rare landing in South Korea, less than a week after the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan visited a South Korean port.
The visits will also take place in the context of rapprochement between Pyongyang and Moscow.
Russia and North Korea, historic allies, are both subject to global sanctions: Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine and Pyongyang for its nuclear weapons tests.
The two countries’ leaders, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, held a summit in Russia in September, at which Seoul and Washington later said Pyongyang had begun supplying weapons to Moscow.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said last week that Pyongyang appeared to have received Russian advice on satellite technology in return.
According to the NIS, Pyongyang has failed twice this year in attempts to put a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit and is in the final stages of preparations for a third launch.