South Korea threatens North with allied response to another nuclear test
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has threatened North Korea with unprecedented joint response with his country’s allies if Pyongyang goes ahead with a seventh nuclear test.
In an interview with Reuters, Yoon said, “It would be extremely unwise for North Korea to conduct a seventh nuclear test.”
When asked what South Korea and its allies, the United States and Japan, would do in response, Yoon said the response “will be something that has not been seen before.”
The South Korean president also called on China, the North’s close ally, to help dissuade Pyongyang from pursuing the development of nuclear weapons and missiles.
“What is sure is that China has the capability to influence North Korea, and China has the responsibility to engage in the process,” Yoon said.
It is up to Beijing, he added, to decide whether it would exert that influence for peace and stability.
The South Korean president said North Korea’s nuclear program was leading to increased defense spending in countries around the region, including Japan, and more deployment of US warplanes and ships.
South Korea and the United States have agreed to deploy more US “strategic assets” such as aircraft carriers and long-range bombers to the area.
“We must respond consistently, and in lockstep with each other,” Yoon said.
Earlier this month, ahead of the G20 summit, US President Joe Biden told Chinese President Xi Jinping that Beijing had an obligation to try to talk Pyongyang out of conducting a seventh nuclear test.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un said on Sunday that his country’s ultimate goal was to possess the world’s most powerful strategic force. Kim made the announcement after he observed the test of the country’s new Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which flew some 1,000 kilometers before falling in waters in the East Sea, or the Sea of Japan.
Pyongyang’s missile launches have come in response to Washington’s massive land, naval, and aerial war games, along with South Korean and Japanese forces in the region, measures that North Korea regards as practice drills to invade the country.
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