US President Joe Biden warned on Wednesday, April 26, that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s regime would cease to exist if he were to launch a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies. Pyongyang has asserted its nuclear belligerence in the Korean peninsula in recent weeks by claiming rapid development of nuclear-armed Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).
Standing beside the South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in the White House, Biden said that any such attack by Pyongyang would be deemed “unacceptable” by the United States.
“A nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies or partners is unacceptable and will result at the end of whatever regime were to take such an action,” Biden told a joint news conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.
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The two nations will bolster the response to North Korea’s persistent nuclear threat with an agreement that includes plans to dock U.S. nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in over 40 years, bolster training between the two countries and improve information sharing between the allies.
Peace comes through force not ‘goodwill’: South Korean leader
In the joint press conference with US President Joe Biden, the South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Wednesday that peace with North Korea would come through strength and vowed that any response to a nuclear attack would include US atomic weapons.
Yoon said he and US President Joe Biden agreed that “we can achieve peace through the superiority of overwhelming force and not a false peace based on the goodwill of the other side.”
“Sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula does not happen automatically,” Yoon said.
The US officials said that the so-called Washington Declaration was designed to allay South Korean fears over the North’s nuclear weapons program and to keep the country from restarting its own nuclear program. South Korea gave up its nuclear program nearly 50 years ago when it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Yoon earlier this year said his country was weighing developing its own nuclear weapons or asking the US to redeploy them on the Korean Peninsula.
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