The United States and South Korean jets were honing their combined combat skills in massive annual air drills when a foreign affairs spokesman for North Korea announced that war is inevitable.
The spokesperson said high-level politicians in the United States “are showing alarming signs by making bellicose remarks one after another,” the unnamed spokesperson said during an interview a North Korean news outlet on Dec. 6
The spokesperson was referring to remarks by White House National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster on Dec. 2, and days earlier by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Armed Services Committee.
McMaster told an audience at a California defense forum that war was looking more likely on the Korean Peninsula.
“I think it’s increasing every day, which means that we are in a race, really, we are in a race to be able to solve this problem,” said Graham.
“There are ways to address this problem short of armed conflict, but it is a race because [Kim’s] getting closer and closer, and there’s not much time left,” he said.
On Nov. 29, Graham, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, told CNN that war on the Korean Peninsula would see many people hurt and killed but it may be the only option.
“We’re not going to let this crazy man in North Korea have the capability to hit the homeland.”
“If there’s a war with North Korea, it will be because North Korea brought it on itself, and we’re headed to a war if things don’t change.”
The remarks come after years of North Korea’s routine threats to annihilate the United States. While previous administrations routinely ignored such remarks, that policy changed as North Korea accelerated its nuclear weapons program under Kim Jong Un.
The North Korean spokesperson said the remarks were “confrontational warmongering” and had to read them as a warning for North Korea to be prepared for war.
“Worse still, the CIA director has made a provocation against us by impudently criticizing our supreme leadership which is the heart of our people,” said the spokesperson, who described the remarks as a “revelation of the U.S. cunning and heinous intention which is to instigate our strong countermeasures.”
Defectors from North Korea describe being forced to treat Kim Jong Un and his forefathers with reverence. Insulting the Kim family is a serious crime in North Korea, and the regime strictly enforces a cult of personality surrounding the family line. That includes spending tens of millions of dollars on statutes and paintings commemorating the Kim family and posting guards to protect these idolizations from vandalism.
Ongoing U.S. military exercises in the region, combined with the “violent war remarks” make the “outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula an established fact,” the spokesperson said.
“The remaining question now is: when will the war break out.”
The spokesperson’s statement suggests the Kim regime will not stop its nuclear program, even at the risk of regime change, which is widely held as the inevitable outcome of a U.S.-North Korea war.
The spokesperson said the current U.S. administration has already decided to provoke a war on the Korean peninsula and is taking “a step-by-step approach to get there.”
From the United States perspective, each of those steps has been a response to continued North Korean provocations, including its nuclear bomb tests and ongoing missile development program.
The United States has said it is willing to begin talks if North Korea announces a 60-day pause in its weapons tests. North Korea has said it will not enter talks unless the United States acknowledges it as a nuclear-armed state.
From The Epoch Times