North Korea Leadership Watch

Research and Analysis on the DPRK Leadership

KPA Strategic Force Issues Statement

View of the KPA Strategic Force Headquarters element near Kangdong County, Pyongyang (Photo: Google image).

The Korean People’s Army [KPA] Strategic Force, which is responsible for North Korea’s ballistic missile units, issued a statement on August 8 (Tuesday) in which it said it was “now carefully examining the operational plan for making an enveloping fire at the areas around Guam” using the Hwasong-12 ballistic missile.  The statement also alluded to a meeting of DPRK national security principals’ meeting in March 2013 that revealed the notorious “Map of Death.”

The KPA Strategic Force’s statement is a reaction to the August 2, 2017 testing of the Minuteman III missile and contains “keeping our options open” diction and syntax of prior products of DPRK tactical rhetoric.  This, of course, has not inhibited misleading and slipshod analyses that link the Strategic Force’s statement to the “fire and fury” comments made by US President Donald Trump.

If anyone is looking for a definitive “threat” statement from the DPRK, it will come either in the form state media reporting on #1 Event (i.e. Kim Jong Un convenes another principals’ meetings, maps or not; “once Kim Jong Un makes a decision”) or a statement from a supreme power organization such as the State Affairs Commission, the KPA Supreme Command or a joint communique of the Workers’ Party of Korea [WPK] Central Committee and Central Military Commission.

According to KCNA, the KPA Strategic Force’s statement was:

Recently, the US test-fired ICBM Minuteman-3 at its Vandenberg Air Force Base in California State targeting the DPRK, the fourth one this year, openly staged an actual nuclear strike drill targeting the strategic objects of the DPRK by mobilizing its nuclear strategic bombers formation stationed at its Anderson Air Force Base on Guam in the Pacific. It is driving the regional situation to an extreme pitch by bringing various kinds of nuclear strategic hardware before the very eyes of the DPRK. The Strategic Force of the KPA has taken special note of such maneuvers.

Such military maneuvers of the US may provoke a dangerous conflict under the present extremely acute situation prevailing on the Korean peninsula.

Typically, the nuclear strategic bombers from Guam frequent the sky above south Korea to openly stage actual war drills and muscle-flexing in a bid to strike the strategic bases of the DPRK. This grave situation requires the KPA to closely watch Guam, the outpost and beachhead for invading the DPRK, and necessarily take practical actions of significance to neutralize it.

In the morning of August 8 the air pirates of Guam again appeared in the sky above south Korea to stage a mad-cap drill simulating an actual war.

Supreme Commander of the revolutionary forces of the DPRK Kim Jong Un (Kim Cho’ng-u’n), estimating the nature of the military action taken by the US forces in the Asia-Pacific region, once recommended examination of a powerful and effective action plan for containing the US imperialists’ aggression hardware as the U.S. forces are resorting to inappropriate and reckless military actions in the sensitive area, while going on the rampage in the waters off the Korean peninsula and the Pacific waters.

The KPA Strategic Force is now carefully examining the operational plan for making an enveloping fire at the areas around Guam with medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 in order to contain the US major military bases on Guam including the Anderson Air Force Base in which the US strategic bombers, which get on the nerves of the DPRK and threaten and blackmail it through their frequent visits to the sky above south Korea, are stationed and to send a serious warning signal to the US.

The plan is to be soon reported to the Supreme Command soon after going through full examination and completion and will be put into practice in a multi-concurrent and consecutive way any moment once Kim Jong Un, supreme commander of the nuclear force of the DPRK, makes a decision.

The execution of this plan will offer an occasion for the Yankees to be the first to experience the might of the strategic weapons of the DPRK closest.

Explicitly speaking again, the strategic weapons which the DPRK manufactured at the cost of blood and sweat, risking everything, are not a bargaining thing for getting acknowledgement from others and for bartering for anything, but they serve as substantial military means for resolutely countering the US political and economic pressure and military threat as what has been observed now.

Will only the US have option called “preventive war” as is claimed by it?

It is a daydream for the U.S. to think that its mainland is an invulnerable Heavenly kingdom.

The US should clearly face up to the fact that the ballistic rockets of the Strategic Force of the KPA are now on constant standby, facing the Pacific Ocean and pay deep attention to their azimuth angle for launch.

It should make a proper option so as not to regret today in the future.

It should immediately stop its reckless military provocation against the state of the DPRK so that the latter would not be forced to make an unavoidable military choice.

An affiliate of 38 North