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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister has lambasted the “confrontation hysteria of the US and its stooges” while threatening to launch high-profile provocations in response to a US aircraft carrier’s arrival in South Korea and other US military activities, foreign media reported.
Amid reports suggesting President Donald Trump plans to reach out to Kim Jong Un to revive diplomacy, the fresh warning by Kim Yo Jong on Tuesday implies that North Korea will likely increase its weapons testing while also maintaining a confrontational stance against the US.
Kim Yo Jong accused the US of showing “its most hostile and confrontational will” to North Korea with the deployments of the USS Carl Vinson and other powerful US military assets and joint military drills with South Korea, the Associated Press reported, citing a statement by North Korean state media.
“The DPRK is also planning to carefully examine the option for increasing the actions threatening the security of the enemy at the strategic level to cope with the fact that the deployment of US strategic assets in the Korean Peninsula has become a vicious habit and adversely affects the security of the DPRK,” the report quoted Yo Jong as saying.
Last month, North Korea launched strategic cruise missiles in waters off its west coast to demonstrate the potential of its nuclear deterrence.
Kim Jong Un oversaw the missile launch and called for permanently defending the country’s sovereign rights and security with the “reliable nuclear shield,” Seoul’s Yonhap News Agency had reported, citing the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
South Korea’s military confirmed the missile firing, noting it had detected the launches of multiple cruise missiles toward the Yellow Sea, and they were being analysed by South Korean and US intelligence authorities, the report stated.
According to KCNA, the goal of the exercise was to demonstrate the Korean army’s “counterattack capability in any space” and “the readiness of its various nuke operation means” to “the enemies, who are seriously violating the security environment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and fostering and escalating the confrontation environment.”
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