A nuclear war with the US is an established fact and the only question is when it will break out, a North Korean spokesman said last night.
In response to a huge US military exercise over South Korea, the rogue state said: ‘We will make the US dearly pay the consequences with our mighty nuclear force.’
North Korea also claimed that ‘bellicose remarks’ from high-ranking US officials, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, make war inevitable.
US Air Force B-1B bomber, right top, flies over the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday
Pompeo said Saturday that US intelligence agencies believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doesn’t understand how tenuous his situation is domestically and internationally.
The North’s spokesman said Pompeo provoked the country by ‘impudently criticizing our supreme leadership which is the heart of our people.’
The comments were published by the official Korean Central News Agency late Wednesday, hours after the United States flew a B-1B supersonic bomber over South Korea as part of a massive combined aerial exercise involving hundreds of warplanes.
The unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman said: ‘The large-scale nuclear war exercises conducted by the US in succession are creating touch-and-go situation on the Korean peninsula and series of violent war remarks coming from the U.S. high-level politicians amid such circumstances have made an outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula an established fact. The remaining question now is: when will the war break out.
‘We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it, and should the US miscalculate our patience and light the fuse for a nuclear war, we will surely make the U.S. dearly pay the consequences with our mighty nuclear force which we have consistently strengthened.’
Kim Jong-un tested the Hwasong-15 missile, raising the prospect of war with America on the Korean Peninsula
A rally celebrating North Korea’s progress in their nuclear and missile programme in a photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said last night’s drills simulated land strikes at a military field near South Korea’s eastern coast during a drill with US and South Korean fighter jets.
‘Through the drill, the South Korean and US air forces displayed the allies’ strong intent and ability to punish North Korea when threatened by nuclear weapons and missiles,’ the South Korean military said in a statement.
B-1Bs flyovers have become an increasingly familiar show of force to North Korea, which after three intercontinental ballistic missile tests has clearly moved closer toward building a nuclear arsenal that could viably target the US mainland.
The five-day drills that began Monday involve more than 200 aircraft, including six U.S. F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighters.
North Korea hates such displays of American military might at close range and typically uses strong language to condemn them as invasion rehearsals.
It has been particularly sensitive about B-1B bombers, describing them as ‘nuclear strategic’ although the planes were switched to conventional weaponry in the mid-1990s.
Despot: With his plump hands in the pockets of his double-breasted winter coat, Kim Jong Un beams as he visits a brand new potato factory in North Korea