North Korea has laid out its conditions of use for nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies, Reuters reports.
This came in response to a port call by a Ohio class strategic nuclear submarine (SSBN). This is a first time an SSBN has docked in South Korea since the 1980s. North Korea issued the following statement in response:
“The ever-increasing visibility of the deployment of the strategic nuclear submarine and other strategic assets may fall under the conditions of the use of nuclear weapons specified in the DPRK law,” the statement said.
North Korea has codified its use of nuclear weapons, barring itself from ever getting rid of them. North Korea can use the weapons in response to an imminent nuclear strike, regime change, or as a battlefield weapon.
At a time of war planning and higher tensions on the peninsula, a U.S. soldier has escaped to North Korea in what looks like a voluntary defection.
South Korea has said that the American strategic assets are to reassure its own citizens, and deter Northern aggression. America maintains an armored brigade and divisional headquarters in South Korea. Japan and South Korea do not permanently maintain American nuclear weapons, though the Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed that calculus.
