The North Korea on Monday accused the United States of violating its airspace by carrying out surveillance flights and warned that, although it was showing restraint, such aircraft could be shot down in the future.
In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, an unidentified spokesman for the North Korean Ministry of Defense said that the provocative military actions of Washington brought the Korean peninsula closer to a nuclear conflict.
In addition to sending reconnaissance planes and drones, the United States is heightening tensions by deploying a nuclear-powered submarine to the peninsula, the KCNA wrote.
“There is no guarantee that a shocking accident will not occur in which a strategic reconnaissance plane of the American air force would be shot down” off the eastern coast of North Korea, said the spokesman for the Ministry of Defence, quoted by the KCNA.
Pyongyang regularly complains of US-led surveillance flights near the peninsula. The statement noted that North Korea had in the past shot down or intercepted US aircraft off the island or on the border with the South.
No comment was immediately obtained from the command of the American army in South Korea.
The decision to Washington to send strategic nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula is “the least concealed nuclear blackmail” against North Korea and countries in the region, and “poses a serious threat to peace”, the KCNA wrote.
“Whether this extreme situation, which no one wants, happens or not depends on the future actions of the United States … The United States will be held totally responsible,” she added.
South Korea said last month that a US nuclear-powered submarine capable of launching ballistic missiles had arrived in the port of Busan.
The American President Joe Biden and his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk-yeol agreed at the end of April to strengthen cooperation between their two countries to deter Pyongyang from any escalation.
(with Reuters)
2023-07-10 01:37:50
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