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North Korea vows to boost nuclear posture after US subcritical nuke test

DPRK slams US for destabilizing global security through no-expolosion experiment, though expert downplays threat

NK News Jeongmin Kim , May 20, 2024

North Korea has condemned the U.S. for conducting a no-explosion nuclear experiment that it claims destabilizes global security, vowing to recalibrate its own nuclear deterrence measures in response.

The U.S. Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced last week that it conducted a “subcritical experiment at an underground facility in Nevada on May 14 to collect information about the reliability and effectiveness of American nuclear warheads.

“This is a dangerous act that renders the extremely worsening global security environment more unstable, having seriously negative impact on the strategic balance among major nuclear powers,” an unnamed spokesperson of North Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Both the externally facing Korean Central News Agency and the domestic party daily Rodong Sinmun carried the statement.

The spokesperson called the U.S. the “world’s biggest nuclear weapons state” with a “strategic goal to militarily control other countries,” disqualifying it from discussing the threat of nuclear war. 

It is “nothing but rhetoric,” the statement continues before referencing the strategic assets that visited South Korea in the past couple of years, the U.S.-ROK Nuclear Consultative Group on discussing joint nuclear planning and the joint tabletop exercise slated for August on North Korean nuclear use scenarios. 

The latest test in Nevada has “added new tension to the military showdown among nuclear weapons states, fomenting the international nuclear arms race,” the statement reads, vowing to improve its nuclear defense posture against this threat.

However, Shin Seung-ki, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA), told NK News that the U.S. test is not as threatening or new as North Korea described it. ………………………………………….

South Korean and U.S. authorities have said North Korea completed preparations for a seventh nuclear test around two years ago, but Pyongyang has not conducted one so far.   https://www.nknews.org/2024/05/north-korea-vows-to-boost-nuclear-posture-after-us-subcritical-nuke-test/

May 22, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | North Korea, politics international