North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would use nuclear weapons \u201cwithout hesitation\u201d if attacked by the South and ally the United States, state media reported on Friday. Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in decades, with Seoul this week staging a military parade where it showcased its bunker-busting \u201cmonster\u201d missile and President Yoon Suk Yeol warned Kim that using nukes would mean the end of his regime. Pyongyang has also been bombarding the South with balloons carrying bags of trash, and a fresh flurry was seen floating over Seoul early on Friday by AFP reporters. Seoul\u2019s military confirmed it had detected the balloon launches overnight. If an enemy\u2019s forces were \u201cencroaching upon the sovereignty\u201d of the North, Pyongyang would \u201cuse without hesitation all the offensive forces it has possessed, including nuclear weapons,\u201d Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. Images in state media showed Kim, clad in his customary leather jacket, speaking at a training event for special operations forces. There, he slammed Yoon for his \u201cend of regime\u201d comments and \u201cclamouring\u201d about his country\u2019s alliance with the United States. Seoul, which does not have nuclear weapons of its own, is covered by the US nuclear umbrella, and Washington has stationed tens of thousands of troops in the country since the Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace treaty. Kim said it was Seoul and Washington who were \u201cdestroying regional security and peace\u201d, KCNA reported, while branding South Korea\u2019s leader \u201can abnormal man\u201d. Military parade On Tuesday, fighter jets flew over downtown Seoul and tanks rolled through the streets, as South Korea displayed for the first time its largest ballistic missile, the Hyunmoo-5, which is capable of destroying underground bunkers. An American B-1B heavy bomber also staged a flyover of the ceremony early Tuesday, flanked by F-15K jets. Washington periodically deploys nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula, underscoring its protection of the South from Pyongyang\u2019s growing threats. At the event marking South Korea\u2019s Armed Forces Day, Yoon said that if the North \u201cattempts to use nuclear weapons, it will face the resolute and overwhelming response of our military and the US and Republic of Korea alliance.\u201d \u201cThat day will be the end of the North Korean regime,\u201d he added. North Korea is expected to to scrap a landmark inter-Korean agreement signed in 1991 at a parliamentary meeting next week, Seoul\u2019s unification ministry said Wednesday, as part of Kim\u2019s drive to officially define the South as an enemy state. Earlier this year, Kim called to remove unification-related clauses from the constitution, while abolishing agencies dedicated to improving ties with the South. Last month, the North also disclosed images of a uranium enrichment facility for the first time, showing leader Kim touring the site as he called for more centrifuges to boost the country\u2019s nuclear arsenal. South Korea\u2019s spy agency later said the unprecedented disclosure was \u201cdirected at the US\u201d and that North Korea was believed capable of producing a double-digit number of nuclear weapons. Last week, a lawmaker told reporters that the National Intelligence Service had warned the North might carry out another nuclear test \u2014 its seventh \u2014 after the US elections in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would use nuclear weapons \u201cwithout hesitation\u201d if attacked by the South and ally the United States,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20036,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}