Yoon warns of overwhelming response to any N.K. provocation ahead of elections

President Yoon Suk Yeol warned Wednesday of an immediate and overwhelming response to any North Korean provocation ahead of the South Korean parliamentary elections in April.

“North Korea is highly likely to carry out various provocations and psychological warfare in order to create social confusion and divide public opinion ahead of this year’s general elections,” he said during a commissioning ceremony for the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at the Army Cadet Military School in Goesan, 114 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

“At times like this, the military must unite with the people to firmly defeat North Korea’s scheme to sway the Republic of Korea,” he said, using South Korea’s formal name.

Yoon reiterated the need to achieve “peace through strength” based on an overwhelming capability and readiness posture, not a “fake peace” relying on the other party’s good intentions.

He noted that North Korea is the only country in the world to have legalized the preemptive use of nuclear weapons and continues to make nuclear threats and stage missile provocations while defining the South as its “primary foe” and threatening to completely occupy the South.

“Our government and military will maintain a strong and firm readiness posture so that North Korea will not dare challenge the Republic of Korea, and in the event North Korea provokes, respond immediately and overwhelmingly,” he said.

Yoon vowed to complete the integrated nuclear extended deterrence regime between South Korea and the United States through the Nuclear Consultative Group and to accelerate the development of the homegrown three-axis system to block North Korea’s nuclear threats at their source. The three-axis system involves anti-missile defense, a program to incapacitate the North Korean leadership and a preemptive strike platform.

He also vowed to further strengthen security cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, as well as solidarity with the international community, based on a strong South Korea-U.S. alliance.