Pyongyang desires to hold out a nuclear missile check within the run-up to the US midterm elections, South Korea’s former high spy has claimed
Pyongyang will time its subsequent nuclear missile check to come back forward of the upcoming US midterm elections, Park Jie-won, the previous head of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), has claimed.
“They are going to do it in order to demonstrate a threat that [their] missile can fly to the US, carrying a miniaturized and lighter warhead, and to deal a blow to the Joe Biden administration ahead of the midterm election,” Park, who led the NIS between 2020 and May 2022, informed KBS Radio on Monday.
Park added that “there will be some kind of North Korean provocations during the US-South Korea military exercises that start today.”
“Kim Jong-un is not going to overlook it as if nothing happened,” he stated.
The US and South Korea kicked off the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield area train on Monday. Pyongyang routinely protests such joint drills, which it considers a safety menace.
Moscow additionally warned a couple of potential escalation. “Washington is prepared to deploy strategic forces near the Korean Peninsula if the North Koreans conduct a new nuclear weapons test,” Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev stated, including that it might “lead to a further degradation of the situation in the region.”
The South Korean Defense Ministry reported that Pyongyang launched two cruise missiles off the west coast of North Korea final Wednesday, which was the primary such weapons check in additional than two months. North Korea’s chief Kim Jong-un stated late final month that the nation was able to “mobilize” its nuclear arsenal for any potential conflict with the US and South Korea.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price informed reporters on Wednesday that Washington would proceed to work with South Korea and Japan to make sure that Pyongyang is “held accountable for its continued provocations.”
Talks between the US and North Korea on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula successfully stalled in 2019.
(RT.com)