North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s warning followed a meeting between South Korea and the United States last week in Washington.
Pyongyang said it would not hesitate to launch a nuclear attack if “provoked with nuclear weapons”, state media said on Thursday, while Seoul and its allies called for “dialogue without preconditions”.
Kim’s warning followed a meeting between South Korea and the US last week in Washington, where they discussed nuclear deterrence in the event of a conflict with the North.
The meeting’s agenda included “nuclear and strategic planning,” and the allies reiterated that any nuclear attack by Pyongyang on the United States or South Korea would result in the overthrow of the North Korean regime.
Kim told his military missile bureau that he “does not hesitate to launch even a nuclear attack when provoked by the enemy with nuclear weapons,” Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency reported on Thursday.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo issued a statement soon after, calling on the nuclear-armed country to stop further provocations and accept the invitation to engage in substantive dialogue without preconditions.
The three countries have stepped up defense cooperation in the face of Pyongyang’s record series of weapons tests this year, and on Tuesday activated a system to share real-time data on North Korean missile launches.
Pyongyang sees the drills by the US and its allies as a rehearsal for an invasion and has long justified its rapid missile launches as necessary countermeasures.
“The two Koreas are at the peak of escalating rhetoric and threats of pre-emptive strikes. The latest developments clearly reflect the seriousness of the situation and the current turbulent state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula,” Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP on the occasion, Klix.ba reports.
