SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea has threatened to shoot down any United States spy planes violating the country’s airspace and condemned US plans to deploy a nuclear missile submarine near the Korean peninsula.
A spokesperson for the North’s Ministry of National Defence Monday said the US has “intensified espionage activities beyond the wartime level”, with “provocative” flights made by United States spy aircraft over eight straight days in July and one reconnaissance plane intruding into its airspace over the East Sea “several times”.
“There is no guarantee that such shocking accident as downing of the U.S. Air Force strategic reconnaissance plane will not happen in the East Sea of Korea,” the spokesperson said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The Ministry’s spokesperson cited past incidents when Pyongyang shot down US aircraft, and warned the United States would pay for its “frantically staged” air espionage.
The statement also criticised the planned US strategic nuclear assets deployment to the Korean peninsula as “the most undisguised nuclear blackmail” to North Korea, saying it posed a severe threat to regional and global security.
“The present situation clearly proves that the situation of the Korean peninsula is coming closer to the threshold of nuclear conflict due to the U.S. provocative military action,” the statement read.
Washington said in April that it would send a nuclear-armed ballistic submarine to make the first visit to a South Korean port in decades without specifying the timing.
North Korea has conducted multiple sanctions-busting launches this year, including test-firing its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in May attempting to put a military spy satellite into orbit.
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol has ramped up defence cooperation with the US in response, staging joint military exercises with advanced stealth jets and high-profile US strategic assets.
Yoon is set to attend a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit in Lithuania this week, seeking stronger cooperation with NATO members over North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats, his office said. —AFP
