Here it is bit modified.
While the major world powers
are a divided lot on what stand they should take against North Korea after its
nuclear capable Inter Continental Ballistic Missile test launch yesterday, the
Korean peninsula nation has gone a step further and has issued a grave threat
against South Korea and the US, in an apparent attack over the joint US-South
Korea military drills in the Korean peninsula region.
Timing its first ICBM launch event
with the American Independence Day on July 4 and the 45th anniversary of the
July 4 statement, the first official communiqué on agreement between North Korea
and South Korea on Korean reunification, North Korea has warned against
“submitting and kowtowing” to the US.
According to a Korean Central
News Agency (KCNA) release, North Korea has warned that "the US puppet warmongers
inside and outside who are bringing escalated tension and crisis of a nuclear
war to the Korean peninsula through reckless military actions, in defiance of
the fundamental principle of peaceful reunification should be dealt with heavy
blows and should be wiped out of this sacred land."
According to the release
available on media aggregators on North Korea, the South Korean regime, pushed
by its candlelight demonstrators and subservient to the US, is abusing power and
North Korea, out of its "heavy responsibility for the destiny of the
nation", will never tolerate such traitors. The release says that the
South Korean authorities should not run amuck else there will be catastrophic
consequences as North Korea is fully prepared, "including the ability to
mount precision strikes to target even the eyes of all sorts of enemies, after
putting in place the deterrence for showering the US with bullets and shells of
justice any moment."
South Korea and North Korea
had issued a joint statement on 4 July 1972 on future roadmap for the Korean
reunification. Central to the agreement were the clauses that said the
reunification was to be achieved internally and peacefully, without use of
force and reliance on external actors. But after North Korea started pursuing
its nuclear and missile programme, South Korea started dithering from it. What
followed was decades of highs and lows on the Korean reunification front with
changing regimes and thus approaches in South Korea, irrespective of the prevailing
public sentiment that was increasingly becoming hostile to North Korea after
years of unilateral efforts by South Korea while North Korea remained glued
with the 1972 position that served its purpose.
While China and Russia issued
a joint statement yesterday calling for restraint from all stakeholders, its
duplicity was clear from the fact that while asking North Korea to stop its
nuclear and missile programme, it also asked the US and South Korea to stop
their military drills in the region, an annual feature for many years, instead
of taking a tough approach on North Korea's increasingly aggressive posturing. That
the joint statement also called the US to remove its ballistic missile defence
system THAAD from the Korean peninsula also reaffirms the vested Chinese designs
here. China terms THAAD deployment in its backyard a security threat and breach
of its sovereignty.
The US, which performed a
joint military drill with South Korea in response to the North Korean missile launch,
confirmed that it was indeed an ICBM and according to independent experts, it
was surprisingly successful. According to the claims made by North Korea, the
missile reached to an altitude of over 2800 Kms and met all targets of the
launch event. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un taunted that the successful
ICBM launch was a gift to America on its Independence Day. Experts say that the
altitude touched by the nuclear capable North Korean ICBM makes for a range of
over 8000 Kms and therefore the missile can effectively reach to many parts of
the American mainland.
©SantoshChaubey
