South Korea and the United States are working together on “a coordinated and concrete response to a range of scenarios, including North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons,” according to a statement made by a spokesman for the White House National Security Council on Tuesday.
Coordinated work to deter North Korea from attack. This Tuesday, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council assured that Seoul (South Korea) and Washington (USA) are preparing for any type of North Korean attack, including nuclear ones.
“The United States is fully committed to our alliance with South Korea and endows it with a broad deterrent capability based on the full breadth of America’s defense arsenal (…) Nuclear weapons belong to the United States, but preparation, intelligence sharing, exercises and training must be shared carried out,” the same source explained.
“Any nuclear attack by North Korea on the United States or its allies and partners would be unacceptable and would lead to the downfall of the regime (…) There is no hypothesis that the Kim regime could survive the ‘use of nuclear weapons,’ the Pentagon details in one Document entitled “Nuclear Stance”.
Those answers come after fears shared by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol a few days earlier. The latter had assured that the American “nuclear umbrella” and its “extended deterrence” were no longer sufficient to reassure the South Korean population.
A response to North Korean threats
This Sunday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for “an exponential increase in the nuclear arsenal” at a Labor Party meeting in Pyongyang. He clarified his reasoning by noting that North Korea “will develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile system (ICBM), the main task of which will be rapid nuclear counterattack,” according to the official KCNA agency.
“The current situation requires increased efforts to massively build up military strength to fully guarantee sovereignty, security and fundamental interests in response to worrying military maneuvers by the United States and other hostile forces,” the leader’s statement said, according to a report from the ruling party convention .
Seoul and Washington suspect North Korea of wanting to conduct a new nuclear test soon, the seventh in its history and the first since 2017.