Continuing to intensify its war posturing, North Korea announced its strategic rocket and artillery units were set in combat position and aimed at military bases in the U.S. in preparation for battle.
"From this moment, the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army will be putting in combat duty posture No. 1 all field artillery units including long-range artillery strategic rocket units that will target all enemy objects in U.S. invasionary bases on its mainland, Hawaii and Guam," North Korea announced through the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), according to ABC.
KCNA added that Pyongyang would "show off our army and people's stern reaction to safeguard our sovereignty and the highest dignity through military actions," according to the Telegraph.
Faced with an endless flood of hostile behavior, the U.S. and South Korea signed a new military contingency pact Friday in preparation for future North Korean "provocations."
The new joint plan addresses the possibility of a "limited attack" from North Korea, such as Pyongyang's sinking of the Choenan that left 46 sailors dead, and its shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in December 2010, Department of Defense officials said, according to the BBC. While a pact has long existed providing for U.S. support in the event of a nuclear attack on South Korea, the newly signed contingency plan will provide "immediate and decisive response" to such antagonism, said Lt. Col. Cathy Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, according to The Wall Street Journal.
North Korea's threat against the U.S. was met with dismissal by Seoul. "We have not detected any special movements in the North Korean military," the South Korean Presidential Office said.
This is far from the first time North Korea has declared its military was "combat ready" to stoke international tensions. When North Korea revealed it was removing the country from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993, Pyonyang also said the nation was on "pre-war" status.
With the consistency of its recent antagonism, experts on the region caution its impossible to tell just what North Korea will do next or the country's true nuclear capabilities.
Pyongyang has made a point in recent months of displaying its military brawn through open threats aimed at the U.S. and South, provocative military exercises aimed at South Korean targets, and more.
North Korea has continuously ratcheted up its aggressive rhetoric ever since its third nuclear test launch in February.
Thursday North Korea vowed to attack U.S. military bases in Japan and on the Pacific island of Guam if it felt "provoked," the insular nation announced. North Korea's provocation arrived just one day after the country's young leader Kim Jong Un directed drone attack drills Wednesday on a simulated South Korean target, state-run KCNA news outlet announced. Pyongyang also claimed to have shot down a simulated cruise missile. No one is certain if Pyongyang actually has drones in its possession, but South Korean publication Yonhap News reported last year that the insular country had received U.S. target drones from Syria used in the 70s it was developing into legitimate attack drones.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un supervised live artillery drills March 13 near a disputed sea border Pyongyang shares with the South, targeting South Korean islands in the Yellow Sea, state news agency KCNA reported, according to NBC News.
North Korea declared "merciless" retaliation on the South and U.S. March 11, this time for the pair's joint military maneuvers, announcing it was formally ending the 1953 armistice that stopped the Korean War, and "voiding" peace treaties with Seoul. North Korea also cut off its military and Red Cross hotlines with South Korea, officially severing the hotline it shares with South Korea Monday, Seoul confirmed. South Korea rejected Pyongyang's declaration, saying the North could not unilaterally dissolve the treaty.
March 8 Pyongyang announced it would attack the U.S. with a preemptive nuclear missile strike that would consume Washington, D.C. in a "sea of fire" in retaliation for allegedly stoking hostility with the U.N. sanctions. North Korea rejected the recently approved fifth round of harsher United Nations Security Council sanctions against the country, claiming they were a fundamentally flawed path toward improving relations in the region. The U.N. voted unanimously March 7 to approve tougher sanctions against North Korea as punishment for the country's third nuclear missile test launch in February, stoking the ire of North Korea, who described America as a "criminal threatening global peace" just hours before the U.N.'s vote.
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