With political stability in the Korean Peninsula balanced on a knife-edge, Kim Jong Un decided to escalate tensions even further on Thursday by warning the West that his nuclear forces are ready for “actual war.”
“Our nuclear combat forces… proved again their full preparedness for actual war to bring the enemies under their control,” Kim said, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The North Korean despot’s brinkmanship comes a day after he reportedly oversaw the test of yet another long-range missile, the 26th such test this year alone. A flurry of launches—including some with extremely alarming flight paths over Japan—have come as international analysts fear Pyongyang is preparing to conduct its first nuclear test in five years.
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On Monday, North Korean state media addressed the missile launches for the first time in six months. A KCNA report claimed the tests were simulations for strikes on South Korean and U.S. military targets positioned south of the peninsula’s dividing border.
The tests showed the regime’s readiness to “hit and wipe out the set objects at the intended places in the set time,” the report added.
While foreign observers say North Korean state media reports should always be treated with caution, the recent uptick in activity is indicative that Kim’s missile program is making progress. “The fact that Kim Jong Un oversaw this missile launch suggests that the cruise missile is at the final stage of development,” Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told CNN.
Pyongyang conducted its first atomic bomb test in 2006. It’s since conducted six nuclear tests total, the last of which detonated a thermonuclear weapon. As yet, there is no evidence to suggest Kim’s regime is capable of deploying a nuclear warhead on a missile of any sort—but the recent testing is causing anxiety among the DPRK’s adversaries to grow.
“North Korea is testing various missiles. And now they’ve tested cruise missiles, and I think they’ll test the tactical nuclear weapon part that can be loaded on each warhead,” South Korean vice defense minister Shin Beom-chul told local radio station SBS Thursday morning.
Kim’s nuclear brags come after Joe Biden slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin for dialing up rhetoric around using a nuke of his own in Ukraine. Speaking on Monday evening, Biden said: “Once you use a nuclear weapon, the mistakes that can be made, the miscalculations, who knows what would happen?”
