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By Joori Roh
SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea on Sunday condemned the South Korean defence minister’s remarks about its potential to strike in opposition to the North and warned it will destroy main targets in Seoul if the South takes any “harmful army motion” similar to a preemptive strike.
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean chief Kim Jong Un, mentioned in a press release that the South Korean defence minister’s remarks “additional worsened the inter-Korean relations and army pressure on the Korean peninsula,” based on state information company KCNA.
That comes after the South Korean minister, Suh Wook, mentioned on Friday that his nation’s army has quite a lot of missiles with considerably improved firing vary, accuracy and energy, with “the flexibility to precisely and rapidly hit any goal in North Korea.”
Suh additionally mentioned the ministry will actively help the army to make sure it has the potential to reply overwhelmingly to North Korea’s missile threats. He known as the north its “enemy.”
Kim, the vice division director of the Central Committee of the Staff’ Occasion of Korea, additionally mentioned the nation would “rethink a variety of issues” and that South Korea “could face a critical menace” as a result of such remarks.
In a separate assertion on Sunday, Pak Jong Chon, secretary of the Central Committee of the Staff’ Occasion of Korea, mentioned the North “will mercilessly direct all its army power into destroying main targets in Seoul and the south Korean military” if the South Korean military engages in a harmful army motion similar to a preemptive strike.
The north, nonetheless, didn’t elaborate on the place it noticed as the most important targets inside Seoul.
Tensions within the Korean peninsula have sharply escalated in current weeks after North Korea examined two ballistic missiles on Feb. 26 and March 4 that concerned a brand new ICBM system that the nation is growing, and because it performed a full ICBM take a look at – the primary since 2017 – final week.
Following the assessments, the USA on Friday imposed sanctions on 5 entities it accused of offering help to North Korea’s improvement of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile packages.
Tensions could rise additional as South Korea’s President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol is about to take workplace subsequent month, who has mentioned previously that preemptive strikes could be the solely approach to counter North Korea’s new hypersonic missiles if they seem prepared for an imminent assault.
Yoon has known as for reinforcing army deterrence, together with by strengthening ties with the USA, and has vowed to hunt to ascertain a everlasting three-way dialogue channel between South Korea, North Korea and the USA.
(Reporting by Joori Roh; Enhancing by Richard Chang and Daniel Wallis)
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