I’ll hit the nuclear button, says North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has warned he will not hesitate to launch a nuclear attack if ‘provoked with nukes’.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Picture: AFP

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has warned he will not hesitate to launch a nuclear attack if “provoked with nukes”, while Seoul and its allies called for “dialogue without preconditions”.

Kim’s warning follows a meeting between South Korea and the US last week in Washington, where they discussed nuclear deterrence in the event of conflict with the North.

The meeting’s agenda included “nuclear and strategic planning”, and the allies reiterated that any nuclear attack by Pyongyang on the US or South Korea would result in the end of the North Korean regime.

But Kim told his military’s missile bureau “not to hesitate (launching) even a nuclear attack when the enemy provokes it with nukes”, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said on Thursday.

Washington, Seoul and Tokyo released a statement shortly afterwards, urging the nuclear-armed country to “stop conducting further provocations and accept our call for engaging in substantive dialogue without preconditions”.

The three countries have ramped up defence co-operation in the face of a record-breaking series of weapons tests by Pyongyang this year, and on Tuesday activated a system to share real-time data on North Korean missile launches.

On Monday, the North launched its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-18, later describing it as “a warning counter-measure” against what it described as persistent acts of “military threat” by Washington and its ­allies.

Last week, a US nuclear-powered submarine arrived in the South Korean port city of Busan, and on Wednesday Washington flew its long-range bombers in drills with Seoul and Tokyo.

The North has recently stressed that the “Korean peninsula is in a state of war by law” and that “strategic assets” ­deployed by Washington in the South will be “the first targets of destruction”.

In October, when a US B-52 bomber capable of carrying ­nuclear weapons took part in the first joint aerial drills conducted by Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, Pyongyang described the exercise as “the intentional ­nuclear war provocative moves of the US”.

Pyongyang sees drills by the US and its allies as rehearsals for invasion and has long justified its blitz of missile launches as necessary “countermeasures”.

Seoul’s Defence Minister has been making unusually fiery remarks of late and last week warned that Pyongyang would face a “hell of destruction” if it engaged in any “reckless” action that “destroys peace”.

The two Koreas are at a “peak of escalating rhetoric,” Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said.

The latest developments “clearly reflect the seriousness of the situation and the current (turbulent) state of affairs on the Korean Peninsula”, he added.

Pyongyang last year declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear power and has repeatedly said it would never give up its nukes program, which the regime views as essential for its survival.

In a separate statement on Thursday, Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, slammed the UN Security Council for convening a session to discuss the North’s latest ICBM launch, arguing it was a demonstration of Pyongyang’s inherent right to self-defence.

AFP