Kim Yo Jong. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called South Korea’s recent front-line live-fire drills “suicidal hysteria” as she threatened unspecified military steps on July 8 if further provoked.

The warning by Kim Yo Jong came after South Korea resumed firing exercises near its tense land and sea borders with North Korea in the past two weeks. The exercises were the first of their kind since South Korea suspended a 2018 agreement with the North aimed at easing front-line military tensions in June.

“The question is why the enemy kicked off such war drills near the border, suicidal hysteria, for which they will have to sustain terrible disaster,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media.

She accused South Korea’s conservative government of deliberately escalating tensions as a way to escape a domestic political crisis. She said the riskiness of the South Korean drills is clear to everyone as they happened amid “a touch-and-go situation” established after the U.S., South Korea and Japan recently held a new trilateral military exercise that North Korea views as a security threat.

“In case it is judged according to our criteria that they violated the sovereignty of (North Korea) and committed an act tantamount to a declaration of war, our armed forces will immediately carry out its mission and duty assigned by the (North Korean) constitution,” she said, without elaborating.

Later on Monday, Koo Byoungsam, a spokesperson at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, described Kim’s statement as an attempt to trigger an internal divide in South Korea, saying that North Korea must first look at its own human rights violations and the international isolation caused by its nuclear programme.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry separately said it will continue its live-fire drills as scheduled but didn’t say when and where new exercises are planned.

North Korea has been engaged in a provocative run of weapons tests since 2022. But its two recent tests — one on a missile with “a super-large warhead” and the other on a multiwarhead missile — drew widespread skepticism from South Korean officials and experts who said North Korea likely fabricated successful launches to cover up failed tests.

In early June, South Korea fully suspend the 2018 inter-Korean military pact after North Korea flew balloons carrying manure, cigarette butts and wastepaper across the border to protest South Korean activists scattering political leaflets in the North via their own balloons.

The military agreement — reached during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the Koreas — required the two countries to cease all hostile acts at border areas, such as live-firing drills, aerial surveillance and psychological warfare. The deal had already been in the danger of collapse, with both Koreas taking steps in breach of it amid animosities over North Korea’s spy satellite launch last November.

The Korean People’s Army conducts an artillery firing drill, in North Korea, on March 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised artillery firing drills aimed at boosting combat readiness, state media reported on March 8, days after his country vowed to take corresponding military steps against the ongoing South Korean-U.S. military training that it regards as an invasion rehearsal.

Thursday’s (March 7) drills involved frontline artillery units, whose weapons place Seoul, the South Korean capital, in their striking range, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

Kim Jong Un said artillery units must “take the initiative with merciless and rapid strikes at the moment of their entry into an actual war,” KCNA said.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, on March 8, it had detected North Korea firing artillery into the waters off its west coast the previous day. It said South Korea will make a stern and overwhelming response in the event of provocations by North Korea.

North Korea’s forward-deployed long-range artillery guns pose a serious security threat to Seoul, a city with 10 million people which is about 40 to 50 km (25 to 30 miles) from the border with North Korea.

North Korea’s Defence Ministry said on Tuesday it would conduct unspecified “responsible military activities” in response to the annual South Korea-U.S. military drills that began on Monday. Kim visited a western operational training ground on Wednesday and called for stronger war fighting capabilities.

The 11-day South Korean-US drills involve a computer-simulated command post training and 48 kinds of field exercises, twice the number conducted last year.

North Korea views South Korea-U.S. military exercises as a major security threat, calling them a preparation to launch attacks on the North. Seoul and Washington officials have said their drills are defensive in nature.

North Korea has sharply accelerated its missile testing activities since 2022 in part of efforts to develop more powerful nuclear-capable weapons targeting the U.S. mainland and South Korea. The South Korean and U.S. militaries have expanded their drills in response.

Experts say North Korea likely aims to use a modernised arsenal to win sanctions relief from the United States when diplomacy restarts. They say North Korea could increase its weapons tests and dial up warlike rhetoric this year as the United States and South Korea hold major elections.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol sounded a warning to fellow world leaders on September 21 about the recent communication and possible cooperation between North Korea and Russia, saying any action by a permanent U.N. Security Council member to circumvent international norms would be dangerous and “paradoxical.”

Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly, Yoon Suk Yeol invoked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s visit last week to Russia, which is one of the five permanent members of the council, the U.N.’s most powerful body.

Kim met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s far east. The two said they may cooperate on defence issues but gave no specifics, which left South Korea and its allies — including the United States — uneasy.

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“It is paradoxical that a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, entrusted as the ultimate guardian of world peace, would wage war by invading another sovereign nation and receive arms and ammunition from a regime that blatantly violates Security Council resolutions,” Yoon told fellow leaders on the second day of the U.N. General Assembly’s annual gathering of leaders. He had been expected to raise the issue.

Yoon said that if North Korea “acquires the information and technology necessary” to enhance its weapons of mass destruction in exchange for giving conventional weapons to Russia, that would also be unacceptable to the South.

“Such a deal between Russia and the DPRK will be a direct provocation threatening the peace and security of not only Ukraine but also the Republic of Korea,” he said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “The Republic of Korea, together with its allies and partners, will not stand idly by.” South Korea has expressed support for Ukraine, which is fighting a war against the 2022 Russian invasion of its territory. At the G20 summit in India earlier this month, Yoon said Seoul would contribute $300 million to Ukraine next year and — eventually — a support package worth more than $2 billion.

“The nuclear and missile programmes of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea pose not only a direct and existential threat to the peace of the Republic of Korea, but also (are) a serious challenge to peace in the Indo-Pacific region and across the globe,” Yoon said in his speech.

Foreign experts speculate that Russia and North Korea were pushing to reach arms transfer deals in violation of Security Council resolutions. Both countries are in major disputes with the West, and both are under international sanctions.

While Russian-North Korean cooperation is feared to fuel Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, it has also encouraged unease in South Korea, where many think a Russian transfer of sophisticated weapons technologies would help North Korea acquire a functioning spy satellite, a nuclear-powered submarine and more powerful missiles.

On Tuesday, South Korean Vice-Foreign Minister Chang Ho-jin summoned the Russian ambassador to Seoul, Andrey Kulik, and urged Moscow to immediately stop its military cooperation with North Korea, which he said would have a “very negative impact” on its relations with the South.

North Korea has been increasing its nuclear arsenal for years, ratcheting up tensions in the region as it threatens to use nuclear weapons in conflicts. It regularly conducts missile tests, particularly in the past year.

In response, Yoon and U.S. President Joe Biden in April agreed to expand joint military exercises, increase the temporary deployments of U.S. strategic assets and launch a bilateral nuclear consultative group.