Pyongyang will face doom if it uses nukes, Seoul warns

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Pyongyang will face doom if it uses nukes, Seoul warns

Published: 21 Jul. 2023, 10:59 Updated: 21 Jul. 2023, 11:05

The USS Kentucky, a U.S. nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarine, is docked at a naval base in Busan on Wednesday. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

North Korea would face an end if it decides to use its nuclear arms against the South-U.S. alliance, South Korea warned Friday.

The warning comes a day after North Korea's Defense Minister Kang Sung-nam released a statement criticizing the deployment of a ballistic missile submarine to Korean waters and the launch of the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) earlier this week.

"I remind the U.S. military of the fact that the ever-increasing visibility of the deployment of the strategic nuclear submarine and other strategic assets may fall under the conditions of the use of nuclear weapons specified in DPRK law on nuclear force policy," he said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, referring his country as its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The USS Kentucky arrived in Busan Tuesday in tandem with a visit by U.S. National Security Council officials to Seoul to kick off the inaugural NCG meeting.

Seoul's Defense Ministry refuted North's claims, saying that the launch of the NCG and the submarine deployment were not a plot to use nuclear arms or a nuclear threat.

"As clearly expressed by South Korea and the United States during the NCG meeting, any nuclear attack of the North against the South-U.S alliance will face the alliance's immediate, overwhelming and decisive response," the ministry said in a statement.

"We strongly warn yet again that such a response will lead to an end of the North Korean regime," it added.

The Defense Ministry said Pyongyang will see no yield from the alliance through its nuclear development and threat, urging North Korea to "promptly step forward to a path of denuclearization, realizing that [such moves] will only intensify isolation and destitution."

North Korea on Wednesday fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea in protest of the South-U.S. security conference.

BY SOHN DONG-JOO [sohn.dongjoo@joongang.co.kr]