North Korea just upgraded its war threats by going beyond saying it is ready for war. On Wednesday, the communist nation warned it would attack the U.S. using nuclear weapons. The nuclear attack is hinged on further signs of aggression from Washington amid the U.S. naval strike group aboard an armada steaming toward the western Pacific region.
Sixth nuclear test
The U.S. diverted on Sunday the Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier strike group, from its original destination to Australia toward the Korean peninsula to show Pyongyang its military might.
However, the approach of the strike group escalates further tension in the region and sparked concerns that North Korea could hold a sixth nuclear test.
On April 5, North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile towards the Sea of Japan after Kim Jong-un, the leader of the communist nation, oversaw in early March the firing of four missiles. The launch is to prepare for a reported planned attack by Pyongyang on an American base in Japan.
Source of paranoia
CNN reported that North Korea residents are constantly warned to be always vigilant against outside threats, especially from the U.S. The Syrian airstrike and U.S. President Donald Trump’s deployment of the armada to north Asia only confirmed fears that the United States would attack North Korea.
The book “The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot,” by author Blaine Harden, traced North Korea’s paranoia of a U.S. attack on the three-year Korean War from 1950 until 1953. The U.S. aided South Korea which was invaded by North Korea by dropping an estimated 625,000 tons of bombs on the communist nation.
32,000 tons of napalm unleashed
The volume of bombs the U.S. dropped, including 32,000 tons of napalm, was more than the number of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific during World War II. The bombs killed 600,000 North Koreans, 1 million civilian South Koreans and thousands of soldiers. During the three-year span of the war, the bombs dropped by American warplanes killed about 20 percent of the North Korean population, Curtis LeMay, an air force commander, estimated.
Harden wrote that the bitter memories of the Korean War were kept by the grandfather and father of dictator Kim Jong-un as well as the leader himself. He is using those bombing memories to warn North Koreans of an imminent strike by the U.S. Those alleged threats are used by Pyongyang to justify its nuclear armament program and its large army of 1.2 million soldiers despite the country being poor.
South Korea, the ally of the U.S., has over 500,000 soldiers in its armed forces, while there are thousands of American soldiers in South Korea. North Korea said its revolutionary strong army is observing every move by elements it considers its enemies, focused on the U.S. bases in the Pacific and Seoul as well as the continental United States.