Kim Jong Un’s military threats put U.S. on edge

The Biden administration is closely monitoring a military buildup between North and South Korea along their Yellow Sea maritime border, alarmed by Pyongyang leader Kim Jong Un’s growing threats to redraw the two countries’ Cold War map.

Kim oversaw the test-firing this week of a new surface-to-air missile system near the Northern Limit Line that’s served as the de facto sea border between the two Koreas since the 1950-53 Korean War. The North’s show of force followed Kim’s instructions last month to his country’s most powerful governing body, the Supreme People’s Assembly, that North Korea no longer recognize this maritime boundary and that its military should prepare for action against South Korean forces defending the line.

“The puppet Republic of Korea is trying to defend the so-called fictitious Northern Limit Line, which is neither based on international law nor has a legal justification,” North Korean state media quoted Kim as saying Wednesday. “They are using pretexts such as control over fishing vessels and maritime patrols to deploy warships of various classes to our waters and blatantly violate our sovereignty.”

Kim has specifically ordered combat readiness near two disputed Yellow Sea islands, Yeonpyeong and Baengnyeong, over which North and South Korea fought an extensive artillery battle in 2010 that killed as many as 20 soldiers.

Current and former U.S. officials told Semafor this week that the North’s actions are particularly alarming given Kim Jong Un’s increasingly aggressive posture towards South Korea and his pledges to align more forcefully with Russia and China in their growing standoff with the West over issues ranging from Ukraine and the Middle East to territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Kim, in his speech last month, also announced that he was abandoning North Korea’s long-held policy of reconciliation with the South and ordered the Supreme People’s Assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution to cement South Korea as Pyongyang’s most hostile foreign adversary. He’s also been issuing directives to his military to be prepared to take South Korea by force, according to state media.

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