New York/Seoul: North Korea can shoot down US strategic warplanes in international airspace as part of its right to self-defence under the United Nations charter, foreign minister Ri Yong Ho said in New York as tensions between the nations remain high.
“The UN Charter acknowledges member states’ right of self-defence,” Ri said outside a hotel near the international body’s headquarters on Monday. “As the US has declared a war, even though its strategic bombers don’t cross our border, we will come to own all rights to respond for self-defence including shooting down its planes at any time.”
While North Korea has previously said US President Donald Trump’s comments are a declaration of war, Ri’s statement comes days after the Pentagon sent warplanes near North Korea’s border in a stepped-up show of force.
B-1B Lancer bombers, based in Guam, and F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew the farthest north of the demilitarized zone any US fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea’s coast this century, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in an emailed statement.
The exercises were meant to underscore “the seriousness with which we take DPRK’s reckless behaviour,” White said, using an acronym for North Korea. “This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the President has many military options.”
US stocks fell and bonds gained after Ri’s comments, while the yen strengthened and gold climbed.
Since early August, the US has successfully pushed for two rounds of tighter international sanctions on North Korea, following two intercontinental ballistic missile tests and launches over northern Japan. Pyongyang has responded with additional weapons tests, including a nuclear explosion—its most powerful so far—in early September that caused an earthquake with a magnitude of around 6.3.
Trump, in his debut speech to the UN General Assembly on 19 September, threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if it didn’t abandon its nuclear weapons programme. He mocked Kim with a taunt first used on Twitter days before, saying: “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.”
‘Rocket man’
He followed that up Saturday night on Twitter, posting: “Just heard foreign minister of North Korea speak at UN. If he echoes thoughts of little rocket man, they won’t be around much longer!”
Ri, responding from the UN podium last week, said: “The very reason the DPRK had to possess nuclear weapons is because of the US.” North Korea’s state media also issued a statement Saturday from the National Peace Committee of Korea describing Trump as “wicked” and “a rabid dog.”
North Korea and South Korea, a key US ally, have technically remained at war since the 1950s, with Pyongyang repeatedly saying that an armistice agreement between the two nations is invalid. North Korea has also ramped up its ballistic missile and nuclear tests in violation of multiple UN resolutions.
US analysts now estimate that North Korea may have as many as 60 nuclear weapons, according to a Washington Post report. That’s in addition to cyberwarfare capabilities, a biological weapons research program and a chemical weapons stockpile. It also has a vast array of conventional artillery aimed at Seoul.
Unprecedented statement
On 22 September, Kim issued an unprecedented statement for a North Korean leader aimed at Trump, using the first person in several parts to attack the US president.
“Now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he would destroy the DPRK, we will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history,” Kim wrote in comments carried on the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
In 1969, President Richard Nixon considered tactical nuclear strikes after North Korea shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane, according to documents declassified in 2010 and published by the National Security Archive. Bloomberg