SEOUL, May 1 (Yonhap) — North Korea denounced the latest summit agreement between South Korea and the United States on Monday for providing “legal justification” to the regular deployment of a U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarine and other strategic assets against Pyongyang.
In a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency, Choe Ju-hyon, an analyst on international security affairs, slammed Seoul and Washington for justifying the “paradox” that the planned deployment of a U.S. strategic nuclear submarine does not breach the 1991 inter-Korean denuclearization declaration and has no legal problem.
“Too obvious is the intention sought by the U.S. in encouraging its stooge to paint its reckless confrontational nuclear asset deployment as a ‘legal one,'” Choe said, calling it “sophistry” touted by the U.S. as legitimacy.
President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden held a summit in Washington last week and announced the adoption of the Washington Declaration on strengthening U.S. extended deterrence against the North’s threats, which includes a U.S. plan to send a nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) to South Korea.
Seoul’s defense ministry said the planned SSBM visit to the South does not violate the declaration that the two Koreas reached in December 1991, pledging not to test, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use any nuclear weapons.
Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of the North’s leader Kim Jong-un, issued the North’s first response to the Yoon-Biden summit Saturday, warning Pyongyang could take “more decisive” action to deal with the change in the security environment.
North Korea’s state media on Monday also carried news reports critical of the Washington Declaration from China and Russia, claiming that the international community has expressed “strong” worries about the “negative repercussion” of the summit outcome.
Source: yna
