Kim Jong-un warned of a “new Cold War”, and promised to rapidly expand his arsenal of nuclear missiles and warheads against the “Asian-version Nato”, in one of the starkest articulations so far of the military confrontation taking shape in East Asia.
The North Korean leader was speaking at a gathering of the country’s tame parliament, which on Wednesday revised the constitution to enshrine the country’s status as permanent nuclear state. His talk of a new Cold War comes days after he returned from a
visit to Russia, where he and Vladimir Putin promised one another military and technological aid.
“Now that the US, steeped in the Cold War mentality, has gone to extremes in its anti-DPRK military provocations, it is very important for the DPRK to accelerate the modernisation of nuclear weapons in order to hold the definite edge of strategic deterrence,” Kim told the Supreme People’s Assembly, using the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
He spoke of “the need to push ahead with the work for exponentially boosting the production of nuclear weapons and diversifying the nuclear strike means”, and said that “the DPRK’s nuclear force-building policy has been made permanent as the basic law of the state, which no one is allowed to flout”.
Kim’s reference to the Cold war spells out what has become pronounced in the past five years – the existence of two polarised camps in east Asia, divided politically and diplomatically, and now engaged in an increasingly tense military confrontation.
The US and South Korea, which used to avoid rising to North Korean provocations, now respond to them in kind, dispatching aircraft carriers, nuclear capable bombers and nuclear submarines to conduct exercises around the peninsula in deliberate and co-ordinated shows of force.
As Kim and Putin has moved closer, on the other side of the divide Japan and South Korea have overcome historical resentments to build up a three-way partnership with the US.
“The US … has maximised its nuclear war threats to our Republic by resuming the large-scale nuclear war joint drills with clear aggressive nature and putting the deployment of its strategic nuclear assets near the Korean peninsula on a permanent basis,” Kim said.
“The accelerated establishment of the triangular military alliance with Japan and the ‘Republic of Korea’ finally resulted in the emergence of the ‘Asian version Nato’, the root cause of war and aggression,” Kim told his audience in Pyongyang. “This is just the worst actual threat, not threatening rhetoric or an imaginary entity.”
According to state media, the change to Article 58 of Chapter 4 of the North Korean constitution sets out the principle that “the DPRK, a responsible nuclear weapons state, develops highly nuclear weapons to ensure the rights to existence and development of the country, deter war and defend peace and stability in the region and the rest of the world”.
Although it does not in itself change anything concrete, the amendment confirms North Korea’s self-proclaimed status as a full nuclear state and indicates how far the world is from disarming Kim.
Five years ago, he was meeting Donald Trump to discuss denuclearisation. A year ago, the last gathering of the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) passed a law abandoning the policy of no first-use of nuclear weapons, saying the North could launch a preemptive strike if the leadership was threatened. This week, the SPA declared the North to be on a par with other nuclear powers such as the US, China, Russia and Britain.
Shin Won-sik, the nominee to be South Korea’s next defence minister, promised to “firmly punish” the North for any future military provocations.