Seoul | North Korean state media on Wednesday called upcoming visits to Seoul by U.S. diplomatic and defense chiefs “provocative” acts likely to increase tensions in the region.
American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to arrive late Wednesday and meet his South Korean counterpart Park Jin the next day to discuss in particular North Korea, a country with nuclear weapons.
His two-day trip will be followed next week by a visit to the South Korean capital by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for ministerial-level meetings.
“Unsolicited guests from across the ocean will seek extreme confrontation on the Korean Peninsula, which is the world’s largest hot spot and is on the verge of explosion,” says a commentary published by the official KCNA agency.
“This provocative act is reminiscent of the warmongers’ visits for field inspections to start the Second Korean War” in 1950, the commentary added.
The visits of MM. Blinken and Lloyd will bring “new clouds of war” to the region, this text criticizes.
The trips come as Seoul and Washington strengthen defense cooperation in the face of Pyongyang’s record series of weapons tests this year.
In October, a U.S. B-52 bomber with nuclear weapons capability made a rare landing in South Korea, less than a week after the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS visited a South Korean port Ronald Reagan.
The visits will also take place in a context of rapprochement between Pyongyang and Moscow.
Russia and North Korea, historic allies, are both subject to global sanctions: Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine and Pyongyang for its nuclear weapons tests.
The two countries’ leaders, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, held a summit in September in Russia, with Seoul and Washington later saying that Pyongyang had started supplying weapons to Moscow.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said last week that Pyongyang appeared to have received Russian advice on satellite technology in return.
Pyongyang has failed twice this year in its attempt to put a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit and is in the final stages of preparing for a third launch, according to the NIS.