SEOL: Pyongyang must be ready to seize South Korean territory in the event of an “emergency,” North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said.
In a speech marking the 76th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean military on Friday, Kim praised the military for “firmly protecting the country’s sovereignty and dignity” against “imperialist military threats, blackmail and the risk of war.”
Commenting on increasingly strained relations with Seoul, the North Korean leader said his country had “summed up our people’s history of division and confrontation and defined [South] Korean puppets as Pyongyang’s most harmful and unchanging enemy.”
In this context, Kim stated that in the event of an “emergency”, North Korean politicians “made a national decision to occupy and pacify [South Korean] territory”.
The warning comes after North Korea’s leader ruled out reunification between Pyongyang and Seoul in late December, saying the two neighbors adhere to diametrically opposed principles. Last month, Kim also called on the national parliament to label South Korea as “the number one enemy country.”
Pyongyang and Seoul have never signed a peace treaty since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War that divided the peninsula, and tensions remain high. In recent months, North Korea has carried out numerous missile launches and criticized its southern neighbor for holding joint military exercises with the US, which has about 30,000 troops stationed on the peninsula.
Citing US officials, the New York Times reported in January that the US was concerned that North Korea could “take some form of lethal military action” against Seoul. But the newspaper’s sources doubted Pyongyang would risk anything resembling a full-scale attack.
