North Korea vows worrying response to latest U.S. sub docking in South Korea

On September 23rd, a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine stopped at the southern South Korean port of Busan to take on supplies and let its crew rest. However, the visit earned a strong rebuke from Kim Yo Jong, sister of Kim Jong Un. 

"No matter how the U.S. may demonstrate its 'overwhelming capability' by rising to the surface, even a submarine whose mission is to mount a final nuclear strike under the sea, nothing will change," Kim wrote in an official statement according to Newsweek. 

The Korean English-language newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily reported on the USS Vermont’s arrival in the southern port of Busan and noted it was the first time the 7,800-ton attack submarine has visited South Korea since it was commissioned in 2020. 

photo Credit: U.S. Navy photo by John Narewski

The USS Vermont’s visit came amid heightened tension on the peninsula but the attack submarine’s port call did little to subdue North Korean rhetoric since the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed that Pyongyang would respond to the provocation. 

In a statement issued by Kim Yo Jong, who is Vice Department Director of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim explained the submarine’s appearance “clearly [revealed] the frantic military and strategic attempt of the U.S.” 

Kim went on to claim that Washington was “experiencing unprecedented strategic inferiority in the Korean peninsula and the Asia-Pacific region,” and was afraid of North Korea’s “strong power of independence against the U.S.”

“The U.S. strategic assets will never find their resting place in the region of the Korean Peninsula,” Kim said. “We will continue to inform that all the ports and military bases of the [South Korea] are not safe places,” the statement added. 

As a response to the visit, Kim vowed that North Korea’s nuclear deterrence would be "bolstered up both in quality and quantity continuously and limitlessly as the security of the state is constantly exposed to the U.S. nuclear threat and blackmail.”

Hyung-Jin Kim of the Associated Press reported that the United States has boosted its temporary deployments of military assets like its bombers, aircraft carriers, and nuclear submarines to the peninsula as a show of force to counter Pyongyang's nuclear threats. 

In April 2023, the Biden administration revealed it planned to send nuclear-armed subs to dock at ports in South Korea for the first time in four decades. It was a plan meant to deter North Korea “more visible” according to a senior official quoted by NBC News.  

In July 2023, the USS Kentucky became the first nuclear-armed U.S. submarine to stop at a port in South Korea since the 1980s, the stop was followed by a second port call by the USS Annapolis in the same month according to a report from Reuters at the time. 

It’s important to note that the USS Vermont is not a nuclear-armed sub but it does have the capacity to fire 25 torpedoes against enemy sea surface ships and submarines, as well as 12 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles according to Newsweek. 

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Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By John Narewski, Public Domain