U.S. nuclear saber rattling in the Korean Peninsula, specifically the arrival in the South Korean port of Busan this week of the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Kentucky, has sent nuclear tensions with North Korea soaring. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol boarded the submarine on July 19, the first South Korean President to board this type of submarine. There Yoon delivered a speech, saying that this visit to one of the world’s strongest strategic assets was “very meaningful and reassuring.”
The Kentucky can carry up to 24 Trident missiles and each missile can carry up to 14 nuclear warheads. The missiles have a range of more than 12,000 km. And, as observers have noted, the submarine’s missiles could reach North Korea, the country against which it is ostensibly defending the R.O.K., from as far away as Hawaii, and wouldn’t need a berth on the Korean Peninsula. Speaking on July 18 after the meeting of the Nuclear Consultative Group, Kim Tae-hyo, the first head of South Korea’s National Security Office, said that under the “extended deterrence” agreement with the R.O.K., the Nuclear Consultative Group would jointly decide on taking actions in case of a nuclear attack. “Extended deterrence” means that the U.S. can respond to a nuclear attack on an ally even with nuclear weapons.
North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun-nam warned yesterday that the submarine’s port visit to South Korea this week may fall under the legal conditions for his country’s use of nuclear weapons. “In particular, the hostile forces posed the most undisguised and direct nuclear threat to the D.P.R.K. [North Korea] by bringing an Ohio-class strategic nuclear submarine to the Busan Port operation base, which means strategic nuclear weapons have been deployed on the Korean Peninsula for the first time after 40-odd years,” he said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, reported RT.
