North Korea threatened Sunday to sink the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine deployed to South Korean waters.
“The moment the USS Michigan tries to budge even a little, it will be doomed to face the miserable fate of becoming an underwater ghost without being able to come to the surface,” North Korea’s major propaganda outlet Uriminzokkiri warned.
The Michigan, a nuclear-powered, guided-missile submarine, arrived Tuesday in the port city of Busan, the same day North Korea celebrated the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army.
A Navy carrier strike group led by the nuclear-powered, Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is moving to waters off the Korean Peninsula, boosting the U.S. strategic military presence in the area. The Vinson is taking part in joint drills with the South Korean Navy, an intentional show of force in response to recent North Korean provocations.
“The urgent fielding of the nuclear submarine in the waters off the Korean Peninsula, timed to coincide with the deployment of the super aircraft carrier strike group, is intended to further intensify military threats toward our republic,” the North explained.
North Korea warned that “whether it’s a nuclear aircraft carrier or a nuclear submarine, they will be turned into a mass of scrap metal in front of our invincible military power centered on the self-defense nuclear deterrence.”
The North has previously threatened to sink the Vinson.
“Our revolutionary forces are combat-ready to sink a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a single strike,” the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling party, wrote last Sunday.
North Korea is developing what some observers suspect are anti-ship ballistic missiles, but the North is nowhere close to fielding these weapons in battle, especially considering that the North has yet to successfully test one of these missiles.
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