North Korea’s Kim threatens to destroy South Korea with nuclear strikes if provoked

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened to use nuclear weapons “without hesitation” in case of a nuclear conflict, as he ridiculed South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol as an “abnormal man” and a “puppet”.

Mr Kim said during a visit to a training base of the special operation units of the North Korean army the “permanent existence” of Seoul would be impossible if a nuclear conflict were to occur, according to state media KCNA.

The North Korean dictator’s rhetoric comes following Mr Yoon’s speech at the Armed Forces Day ceremony on Tuesday when the president vowed the “end of the North Korean regime” if Pyongyang used nuclear weapons.

During the military parade, South Korea unveiled its most powerful Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile and other conventional weapons that could target North Korea.

Mr Kim said Mr Yoon’s address fully betrayed his “bellicose temerity” and showed “the security uneasiness and irritating psychology of the puppet forces”, reported KCNA.

Ridiculing Mr Yoon, the North Korean leader called him “an abnormal man”, saying that “the puppet Yoon bragged about an overwhelming counteraction of military muscle at the doorstep of a state that possesses nuclear weapons”.

According to South Korean media Yonhap, it marks the first time in about two years that he has directly attacked Mr Yoon in strong remarks without addressing him as president. His July 2022 speech was the first time he directly addressed Mr Yoon and called him out for threatening the North’s security and right to self defence.

While the exchange of words of war between the two Koreas is not new, the latest comments come amid heightening animosities after the recent disclosure of a nuclear facility and its continuation of missile tests.

North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament next week is likely to constitutionally declare a hostile “two-state” system on the Korean Peninsula to formally reject reconciliation with South Korea and codify new national borders, according to observers.

It would scrap the historic inter-Korean agreement signed in 1991 at a key parliamentary meeting, the South Korean unification ministry said Wednesday.

The country pulled out of the agreement in December and defined inter-Korean ties as relations between “two states hostile to each other”.