North Korea issued a press release Thursday threatening to use its nuclear weapons against the United States after a nuclear-armed U.S. submarine visited South Korea.
Kim Jong-un's regime claimed that the arrival of the Ohio-class submersible represents the "most direct and undisguised" nuclear threat to North Korea, which could set the stage for the use of nuclear weapons.
According to the press release issued by North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun Nam, the U.S. decision has crossed the "red line," which according to the regime, "more clearly indicates what mission the nuclear weapons of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] should carry out."
"I remind the U.S. military of the fact that the ever-increasing visibility of the deployment of the strategic nuclear submarine and other strategic assets may fall under the conditions of the use of nuclear weapons specified in the DPRK law on the nuclear force policy," Sun Nam said, adding that his country's policies allow for "the execution of necessary action procedures" in the event that the use of nuclear weapons against its territory is deemed imminent.
"The U.S. military side should realize that its nuclear assets have entered extremely dangerous waters" he said.
For the first time since the 1980s, a U.S. nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine visited South Korea on Tuesday, as the allies began talks to coordinate their responses in the event of a nuclear war with North Korea. https://t.co/MdEN3CWDqZ
— NBC News World (@NBCNewsWorld) July 18, 2023
The arrival of the submarine
The United States had already announced in April that it would deploy a submarine with the capability to launch ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. However, it was not until last Tuesday that Washington announced that the submersible would finally arrive at the southern port of Busan as a demonstration of its commitment to support the defense of the South Korean country.
The submarine's visit is a historic event, as the last time the United States deployed a nuclear-capable submersible to South Korea was in 1981.
