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| President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon Hee step out of the presidential jet after arriving at Seoul Air Base in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, Sunday. Yonhap |
Pyongyang's reaction reminiscent of dangerous escalation in 2017, analyst says
By Jung Min-ho
If North Korea attacks South Korea with nuclear weapons, two things are now guaranteed to happen: The United States will respond swiftly and overwhelmingly with the full range of its capabilities, including nuclear, and this will result in the end of the North Korean regime.
Those promises, mentioned in the Washington Declaration and backed by U.S. President Joe Biden, are the greatest achievement of President Yoon Suk Yeol's state visit to Washington, according to South Korean officials.
Yoon's spokesman Lee Do-woon, during his final press briefing at the U.S. capital, Friday (local time), hailed the agreement as a practical measure against the growing nuclear threats from Pyongyang as it will involve Seoul in the U.S.' nuclear and strategic planning.
"It was the first time the U.S. had made such promises to an individual state in written form. This shows its strong will to protect South Korea from possible nuclear attacks," Lee said.
The agreement apparently has its limits. Unlike a treaty, it is not legally binding and the U.S. president will remain the sole authority on whether to use nuclear weapons. Questions have been emerging over how much influence Seoul officials would actually have.
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| U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin welcomes President Yoon Suk Yeol during a ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Thursday (local time). AP-Yonhap |
Will the Washington Declaration keep South Korea safe from North Korea's nuclear threats? While debate heats up on that question, Pyongyang appears determined to disrupt any sense of security offered by the pact. On Sunday, the regime vowed to step up its weapons program while using the Seoul-Washington deal as yet another excuse to justify its military buildup.
In its English-language commentary, the Korean Central News Agency, a mouthpiece of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, denounced Biden's "end of the regime" remarks made at a joint press conference after the announcement of the declaration.
"Under such a situation, it is quite natural for the DPRK (North Korea) to bolster its military deterrence corresponding to the grave security environment of the present and the future," it said.
The previous day, Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, insulted Biden as a "person in his dotage" and warned of "enormous" ramifications.
Her personal attack on Biden was similar to the language her brother used against Donald Trump, Biden's predecessor, during the tense months in 2017 when Kim called the former U.S. president a "dotard." This paints a grim picture for the Korean Peninsula facing a tense year ahead, according to Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank.
"There is now a high possibility that military tensions will escalate on the Korean Peninsula this year as they did in 2017, when the U.S. and North Korea came to the brink of war," he said in his analysis sent to The Korea Times.
"Kim Yo-jong said North Korea seeks to 'perfect its deterrence against nuclear war and its second mission.' The second mission means it will unify the peninsula under its rule by nuclear force ... North Korea is expected to reinforce its military exercises, under a scenario of a full-blown war with South Korea, and to ratchet up its threat level with its seventh nuclear weapons test at the proper time."
At a security forum held in Seoul on Sunday, the top nuclear envoys of South Korea and the U.S. ― Kim Gunn and Sung Kim ― shared their assessments of the current situation regarding the North's nuclear weapons and vowed to strengthen cooperation to cease its provocations and bring denuclearization talks back to life.
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