North Korea today accused the US of violating its airspace with a reconnaissance plane and warned that Washington’s plans to send a strategic submarine to the region bring the peninsula closer “on the threshold of a nuclear conflict”.
“This month alone, strategic reconnaissance aircraft and Drones RC-135, U-2S and RQ-4B belonging to the US Air Force flew over the eastern and western Korean seas in turns for eight consecutive days, from July 2 to 9, to carry out provocative aerial espionage.” , reads a statement from a spokesperson for the North Korean Foreign Ministry published today by the state news agency KCNA.
“In particular, a strategic reconnaissance aircraft from the US Air Force illegally penetrated tens of kilometers into the inviolable airspace of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (official name of the country) over the East Sea (name given to the Sea of Japan in the two Koreas) several times,” the text added.
The spokesman, whose name is not specified, considers that the action leads “to the regional situation to a unrecoverable phase“recalls that Pionyang has shot down US spy aircraft on its territory in the past, as happened in 1969 and 1994, and sends Washington “a serious warning in this regard”.
In turn, the Foreign Affairs spokesman stressed the “very dangerous situation” that the plan of USA and South Korea to deploy at some point a submarine with strategic nuclear weapons on the peninsula, as both allies agreed in the Washington Declaration signed in April.
That agreement stipulates that the Pentagon It will deploy US strategic assets, such as the aforementioned submarine, on the peninsula on a rotating and temporary basis to discourage Pyongyang from continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction.
According to the regime, this plan “clearly demonstrates that the situation on the Korean peninsula is approaching the threshold of a nuclear conflict due to the provocative military action of the United States.”
“The United States attempt to introduce nuclear weapons strategic attacks on the Korean peninsula is the biggest undisguised nuclear blackmail against the DPRK (North acronym) and neighboring countries, and a serious threat and challenge to regional and world peace and security,” the text concludes.
After the failure of the 2019 denuclearization negotiations, tensions have risen again on the Korean peninsula, with Pyongyang rejecting any offer of dialogue and conducting a record number of missile tests, and Seoul and Washington resuming their grand joint exercises and deploying US strategic assets on a regular basis.
The US will begin the presidential election cycle on January 15