North Korea Warns It May Respond To US Military Threat "With Overwhelming Nuclear Force"

MADRID, 2 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The North Korean government has warned on Thursday that it is capable of responding to attempted US military action in the region "with overwhelming nuclear force", after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited this week Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

"The (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) DPRK has a clear counter-strategy capable of dealing with any short- and long-term scenario that the US and its vassal forces attempt, and will tightly control present and future potential challenges with the most overwhelming," a spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said, as reported by KCNA.

In this sense, the spokesman has accused the White House of being responsible for the escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula, assuring that the political and military situation is on a "red line".

"The United States is going to unleash an all-out confrontation with the DPRK through continuous combined drills whose scale and scope have been greatly expanded," he said, before adding that, during his visit, Austin expressed "the dangerous scenario of turning Korea into a huge arsenal of war".

The ministry has also insisted that Pyongyang was not interested in dialogue with Washington "as long as it maintains its hostile policy and line of confrontation." "The United States is so shameless as to try to buy time by promoting dialogue with the DPRK under a misleading banner that it has no intention of being hostile, while continuing its most egregious aggressive policy towards the DPRK," it concluded.

The troops of the United States and South Korea have carried out this Wednesday joint aerial exercises over the waters of the Yellow Sea, located between the Korean peninsula and China, being the first of this type since the beginning of the year.

The United States ambassador to South Korea, Philip Goldberg, asked hours before the South Korean government to "trust" the "containment capacity" of the US authorities in the face of the threat posed by North Korea to the region, trying to dispel the Doubts are growing about Washington's "complete readiness" to defend South Korea against a possible North Korean attack as Pyongyang presses ahead with its ballistics and nuclear programs.