Story by Reuters
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North Korea has claimed that about 800,000 of its residents have volunteered to hitch or reenlist within the nation’s army to struggle towards the US.
About 800,000 college students and staff, on Friday alone, throughout the nation expressed a need to enlist or reenlist within the army to counter the US, North Korea’s state newspaper Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported on Saturday.
The declare got here after North Korea on Thursday launched its Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in response to ongoing US-South Korea army drills.
North Korea fired the ICBM into the ocean between the Korean peninsula and Japan on Thursday, hours earlier than South Korea’s president flew to Tokyo for a summit that mentioned methods to counter the nuclear-armed North.
The North’s ballistic missiles are banned beneath United Nations Safety Council resolutions and the launch drew condemnation from governments in Seoul, Washington and Tokyo.
South Korean and American forces started 11 days of joint drills, dubbed “Freedom Defend 23,” on Monday, held on a scale not seen since 2017 to counter the North’s rising threats.
North Korean chief Kim Jong Un accused the US and South Korea of accelerating tensions with the army drills.
North Korea typically responds to what it sees as “provocations” by the US by making bellicose threats. Specialists say that along with the joint army workouts and the assembly this week between South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japan’s chief Fumio Kishida it has taken exception to US President Joe Biden’s plan to host Yoon and his spouse on the White Home subsequent month.
The state go to would be the second of Biden’s presidency, underscoring shut ties between the US and South Korea, and can happen April 26. The conservative Yoon and his administration have made strengthening the US-South Korea alliance a key overseas coverage precedence. Biden, likewise, has sought to nurture the connection, together with with the symbolic marker of his journey to Seoul in Might 2022, his first cease on his inaugural journey to Asia as president.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha Womans College in Seoul, advised CNN lately that in response to the drills and the summits, Pyongyang may “order missile firings of longer ranges, try a spy satellite tv for pc launch, reveal a solid-fuel engine, and even perhaps conduct a nuclear check.”
