The United States has certain missile defense capabilities to repel a strike from North Korea in the event of a conflict. However, despite the fact that the fleet is equipped with Aegis systems and there are ground-based mobile missile defense systems, the threat to the territory of the United States is quite real, military expert Dmitry Kornev writes in a material for Izvestia.
“The risk that it will not be possible to cover all trajectories of a potential missile strike is too great; it is almost impossible to predict them. And therefore, the United States will rely on preventing such a strike by deploying both hypersonic missile systems and air strike weapons in South Korea and near it during a threatened period of time – in order to destroy the North Korean heavy missiles that have advanced to launch positions before launch,” the expert noted.
According to him, there is another way to prevent a nuclear disaster, and so far it looks more reliable – reducing the degree of confrontation.
“Apparently, this is the path that the American military and their South Korean partners took. Moreover, if it flares up, then even if something reaches America, it will not destroy the United States, but several dozen tactical nuclear charges of the DPRK can definitely wipe out the entire Korean Peninsula from the face of the earth in the event of a military escalation. And in principle it is difficult to oppose anything to this nuclear retaliation,” Kornev believes.
On January 5, the North Korean military fired 200 shells into a coastal stretch of the Yellow Sea near disputed islands that fall under South Korean jurisdiction. On the same day, the Seoul military responded symmetrically – 400 shells at a point north of the conditional demarcation line in the Yellow Sea. The strike was launched from the Kayomori base and Cape Changsan. After this response, media reports appeared about the highest degree of tension between the two countries.
On January 10, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, during a visit to defense industry enterprises, said that South Korea is the main enemy and the most hostile state for the country.
“Kim Jong-un noted that now the historical time has come when it is necessary to characterize the Republic of Korea as the most hostile state for the DPRK, which for a long time, for about 80 years, madly clung only to an evil confrontation in order to overthrow the power and regime of the DPRK,” – the Korean Central News Agency said in a statement.
Read more in the exclusive material from Izvestia:
The Greatest Threat: How Real is North Korea's Missile Power?
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