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Pyongyang warns of 2nd Korean war amid peninsula crisis

North Korean leader says escalation of military activities by US, South Korea, Japan added pressure on Korean Peninsula.

AFP

Kim noted that it was first time in 40 years that US nuclear strategic weapons including a “super-large strategic nuclear submarine” as well as a nuclear strategic bomber had entered the Korean Peninsula. / Photo: AFP

Warning of a second Korean war, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said the peninsula was undergoing an “uncontrollable crisis” due to “reckless” military provocations by the US and South Korea.

“What merits attention is that the (South Korean President) Yoon Suk Yeol group of puppets is making a suicidal attempt to achieve a ‘balance of power’ with the DPRK,” Kim told a meeting of the country's ruling Workers' Party.

Kim said Seoul was attempting to “stand in confrontation” with North Korea “to the last” by expanding the UN Command, which he called “an illegal ghost body.”

The North Korean leader alleged that the UN Command was being expanded into a "multinational war organization for provoking a second Korean war,” Pyongyang-based KCNA reported on Sunday.

He accused the US, Japan and South Korea of “long-term conspiracy and collusion against” North Korea which is “driving the situation in the Korean peninsu la into more unpredictable and critical conditions.”

Nuclear arsenal

Kim noted that it was first time in 40 years that US nuclear strategic weapons including a “super-large strategic nuclear submarine” as well as a nuclear strategic bomber had entered the Korean Peninsula.

These turned South Korea “completely into a forward military base and a nuclear arsenal of the US and joint military exercises of various scales have been ceaselessly staged all year round, setting the "highest record in history,” Kim said.

He warned that a “physical clash can be caused and escalated even by a slight accidental factor in the area of along the Military Demarcation Line where large armed forces of both sides are standing in confrontation with one another."

In the outgoing year, Pyongyang successfully launched a military satellite on its third attempt, besides dozens of missiles, including at least five inter-continental ballistic ones.

North Korea's Kim seeking reunification with South Korea a 'mistake'

Kim said North Korea would launch three more reconnaissance satellites in the year ahead.

“No one can deny the fact that the two states, the most hostile toward each other, are coexisting in the Korean peninsula at present,” Kim said about North and South Korea.

The UN Command was established on July 24, following the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, with China on the side of North Korea, support that continues to this day. The war ended in 1953 in armistice, after which the US deployed around 28,500 soldiers in South Korea.

According to the UN Command website, UN Security Council Resolutions 83 and 84 “provided the international legal authority for member states to restore peace on the Korean Peninsula, and they designated the United States as the leader of the unified command we know as UN Command.”

The UN Command is headquartered in the US Army Garrison Humphreys in South Korea.

Besides South Korea, its members include the US, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Türkiye, which also fought in the Korean War, with hundreds of Turkish soldiers giving their lives.