SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would use nuclear weapons “without hesitation” if attacked by the South and ally the United States, state media reported Friday.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in decades, with Seoul this week staging a military parade where it showcased its bunker-busting “monster” missile and President Yoon Suk Yeol warned Kim that using nukes would mean the end of his regime.
Pyongyang has also been bombarding the South with balloons carrying bags of trash, and a fresh flurry was seen floating over Seoul early Friday by AFP reporters. Seoul’s military confirmed it had detected the balloon launches overnight.
If an enemy’s forces were “encroaching upon the sovereignty” of the North, Pyongyang would “use without hesitation all the offensive forces it has possessed, including nuclear weapons,” Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
Images in state media showed Kim, clad in his customary leather jacket, speaking at a training event for special operations forces.
There, he slammed Yoon for his “end of regime” comments and “clamoring” about his country’s alliance with the United States.
Seoul, which does not have nuclear weapons of its own, is covered by the US nuclear umbrella, and Washington has stationed tens of thousands of troops in the country since the Korean war ended in 1953 without a peace treaty.
Kim said it was Seoul and Washington who were “destroying regional security and peace,” KCNA reported, while branding South Korea’s leader “an abnormal man.”
On Tuesday, fighter jets flew over downtown Seoul and tanks rolled through the streets, as South Korea displayed for the first time its largest ballistic missile, the Hyunmoo-5, which is capable of destroying underground bunkers.
An American B-1B heavy bomber also staged a flyover of the ceremony early Tuesday, flanked by F-15K jets.
Washington periodically deploys nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula, underscoring its protection of the South from Pyongyang’s growing threats.
At the event marking South Korea’s Armed Forces Day, Yoon said that if the North “attempts to use nuclear weapons, it will face the resolute and overwhelming response of our military and the US and Republic of Korea alliance.”
“That day will be the end of the North Korean regime,” he added.
North Korea is expected to scrap a landmark inter-Korean agreement signed in 1991 at a parliamentary meeting next week, Seoul’s unification ministry said Wednesday, as part of Kim’s drive to officially define the South as an enemy state.
Earlier this year, Kim called to remove unification-related clauses from the constitution, while abolishing agencies dedicated to improving ties with the South.
Last month, the North also disclosed images of a uranium enrichment facility for the first time, showing leader Kim touring the site as he called for more centrifuges to boost the country’s nuclear arsenal.
South Korea’s spy agency later said the unprecedented disclosure was “directed at the US” and that North Korea was believed capable of producing a double-digit number of nuclear weapons.
Last week, a lawmaker told reporters that the National Intelligence Service had warned the North might carry out another nuclear test — its seventh — after the US elections in November.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un threatens to use nukes if attacked
https://arab.news/6e8wb
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un threatens to use nukes if attacked
- Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in decades
- Washington periodically deploys nuclear assets to the Korean peninsula
Near record number of small boat migrants reach UK in 2025
- The second-highest annual number of migrants arrived on UK shores in small boats since records were started in 2018, the government was to confirm Thursday
LONDON: The second-highest annual number of migrants arrived on UK shores in small boats since records were started in 2018, the government was to confirm Thursday.
The tally comes as Brexit firebrand Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration party Reform UK surges in popularity ahead of bellwether local elections in May.
With Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer increasingly under pressure over the thorny issue, his interior minister Shabana Mahmood has proposed a drastic reduction in protections for refugees and the ending of automatic benefits for asylum seekers.
Home Office data as of midday on Wednesday showed a total of 41,472 migrants landed on England’s southern coast in 2025 after making the perilous Channel crossing from northern France.
The record of 45,774 arrivals was recorded in 2022 under the last Conservative government.
The Home Office is due to confirm the final figure for 2025 later Thursday.
Former Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak vowed to “stop the boats” when he was in power.
Ousted by Starmer in July 2024, he later said he regretted the slogan because it was too “stark” and “binary” and lacked sufficient context “for exactly how challenging” the goal was.
Adopting his own “smash the gangs” slogan, Starmer pledged to tackle the problem by dismantling the people smuggling networks running the crossings but has so far had no more success than his predecessor.
Reform has led Starmer’s Labour Party by double-digit margins in opinion polls for most of 2025.
In a New Year message, Farage predicted that if Reform got things “right” at the forthcoming local elections “we will go on and win the general election” due in 2029 at the latest.
Without addressing the migrant issue directly, he added: “We will then absolutely have a chance of fundamentally changing the whole system of government in Britain.”
In his own New Year message, Starmer insisted his government would “defeat the decline and division offered by others.”
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, urged people not to let “politics of grievance tell you that we’re destined to stay the same.”
- Protests -
The small boat figures come after Home Secretary Mahmood in November said irregular migration was “tearing our country apart.”
In early December, an interior ministry spokesperson called the number of small boat crossings “shameful” and said Mahmood’s “sweeping reforms” would remove the incentives driving the arrivals.
A returns deal with France had so far resulted in 153 people being removed from the UK to France and 134 being brought to the UK from France, border security and asylum minister Alex Norris said.
“Our landmark one-in one-out scheme means we can now send those who arrive on small boats back to France,” he said.
The past year has seen multiple protests in UK towns over the housing of migrants in hotels.
Amid growing anti-immigrant sentiment, in September up to 150,000 massed in central London for one of the largest-ever far-right protests in Britain, organized by activist Tommy Robinson.
Asylum claims in Britain are at a record high, with around 111,000 applications made in the year to June 2025, according to official figures as of mid-November.
Labour is currently taking inspiration from Denmark’s coalition government — led by the center-left Social Democrats — which has implemented some of the strictest migration policies in Europe.
Senior British officials recently visited the Scandinavian country, where successful asylum claims are at a 40-year low.
But the government’s plans will likely face opposition from Labour’s more left-wing lawmakers, fearing that the party is losing voters to progressive alternatives such as the Greens.
