North Korea is “fully ready to fight” the U.S., state-run media emphasized in a message Saturday.
“The DPRK has everything it needs and is ready for anything,” a North Korean editorial noted, using the official acronym for the regime. “An independent nuclear state, it is fully ready to fight any kind of war the US wants.”
That message was a response to a Feb. 15 report that U.S. intelligence agencies have surged resources towards the Korean Peninsula. The intelligence community is working on data collection and in preparation for a possible cyberattack to prevent the regime from acquiring the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon to the U.S., according to the report.
“The first shot will be cyber,” an anonymous former intelligence official told Foreign Policy.
North Korea’s belated reply coincided with the publication of a defiant message to a United Nations conference on nuclear disarmament earlier this week. A regime diplomat told international officials in Geneva that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is necessitated by the U.S. “amassing huge strategic assets in and around the Korean Peninsula.”
President Trump authorized the build-up in response to North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile tests over the last year. “In order to defend itself from such threats, the DPRK had access to nuclear weapons, treasured sword of justice,” the diplomat told the U.N. conference, per South Korea’s Yonhap News. “As we have stated on numerous occasions, we will consider any type of blockade as an act of war against us, and if the U.S. has indeed the guts to confront us in any ‘rough’ manner, we will not (hesitate) to respond to it.”
Russia has likewise pointed to U.S. ballistic missile defenses in the region to justify the development of “invincible” nuclear weapons, maintaining that the systems are targeted at Russia rather than North Korea.
“[N]ew launching areas are to be created in Japan and South Korea,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. “[T]he United States is creating a global missile defense system primarily for countering strategic arms that follow ballistic trajectories. These weapons form the backbone of our nuclear deterrence forces, just as of other members of the nuclear club.”
