North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has threatened nuclear retaliation against the South after recent remarks by his South Korean counterpart.
During a parade on Tuesday to mark Armed Forces Day, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol unveiled weapons intended to keep the North at bay. "That day will be the end of the North Korean regime," Yoon vowed.
According to the Associated Press, Yoon unveiled the Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile, which observers say can destroy underground bunkers in North Korea.
Yoon warned that if Pyongyang were ever to use nuclear weapons, United States and South Korean forces would mount a "resolute and overwhelming" response.
"The North Korean regime must abandon the delusion that nuclear weapons will protect them," the South Korean president added.
During a fiery speech that Kim delivered to "special operation" troops at a training base in an undisclosed western part of the country, the 40-year-old leader hit back at Yoon's warning.
"The puppet Yoon bragged about overwhelming counteraction of their military muscle at the doorstep of a state possessing nuclear weapons, and it was a great irony that caused misgivings about whether he is an abnormal man," the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) cited Kim as saying.
The leader then blasted his South Korean counterpart for having made a bluff and demonstrating "security uneasiness and restless psychology of the puppet forces."
Kim said if "full of excessive confidence," Seoul violated its neighbor's sovereignty, the North would "use without hesitation all the striking forces in its possession, including nuclear weapons."
Newsweek has reached out to the North Korean embassy in Beijing, the South Korean embassy in the U.S. and the Pentagon via email for comment.
Such rhetoric from both North and South Korea is not new but comes at a time of heightened friction between the neighbors amid tit-for-tat cross-border exchanges of balloons carrying trash South and anti-Kim propaganda North.
It also follows the end of a 2018 military agreement between the neighbors to deescalate tensions along their heavily militarized border, launches of spy satellites, and the North's ongoing spate of missile launches.
North-South tensions could further deteriorate soon.
The South's Unification Ministry, historically responsible for overseeing inter-Korean integration efforts, recently said it believes Pyongyang plans to cement Kim's call to rule out any possibility of unification with the South at Monday's session of the rubber-stamp Supreme People's Assembly.
Such a move would be the culmination of the Kim regime's efforts in recent years to scrub any mention of a hoped-for unification with the South, long touted as an eventual aim by both Koreas.
At the start of this year, Pyongyang amended its constitution to label Seoul as its primary foe.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, North Korea had around 50 nuclear warheads as of January, with enough fissile material for up to 90.
Last month, North Korean state media shared images suggesting the existence of a second uranium enrichment site, which could be used to increase the country's production of nuclear material, potentially accelerating its United Nations-sanctioned nuclear program.
During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on September 17, Lieutenant General Xavier Brunson, now confirmed as the U.S. Forces Korea commander, described North Korea's nuclear ambitions as "the single greatest challenge facing the tri-commands."
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