N. Korea warns US strategic assets will be '1st targets of destruction'

This photo, provided by South Korea's defense ministry, shows a B-52H strategic bomber, which is parked at a South Korean Air Force base at Cheongju Airport, North Chungcheong Province, Oct. 19. Yonhap

North Korea on Friday condemned the arrival of a U.S. B-52 bomber in South Korea, threatening that U.S. strategic assets deployed on the Korean Peninsula will become the "first targets of destruction."

Pyongyang's criticism came in response to the landing of the nuclear-capable bomber, a key U.S. strategic asset, at an air base in South Korea on Tuesday in its first known arrival in the South in a show of force against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

"The U.S. would be well aware that the Korean Peninsula is in a state of war by law and its strategic assets deploying in the puppet region are the first targets of destruction," the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English-language statement.

Claiming that provocations of a nuclear war against the North are progressing into a "more dangerous stage," Pyongyang pledged to take a "corresponding option."

"The U.S. had better understand at an early date that the more frequently the misjudgment is repeated, the more desperately the critical moment of the American continent will be approached," the KCNA said, stating its nuclear policy.

In September, the North amended the constitution to enshrine a nuclear force-building policy, a year after it enacted a new nuclear law authorizing the preemptive use of nuclear arms, calling its status as a nuclear state "irreversible."

The deployment of the B-52 bomber is part of efforts to bolster America's extended deterrence commitment to mobilizing the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear, to defend its ally.

In April, Washington pledged to enhance the "regular visibility" of strategic assets on the peninsula as part of efforts to deter Pyongyang's military threats in a joint declaration issued by President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden during their summit. (Yonhap)