North Korea threatened Sunday to sink an American nuclear-powered submarine deployed to the region to deter the authoritarian regime from developing weapons of mass destruction.
"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," warned the state’s propaganda website Uriminzokkiri.
The guided-missile sub arrived in South Korea last week before heading out to sea for drills, according to local news agency Yonhap.
With the U.S. also sending a major aircraft carrier group to South Korean waters, Pyongyang said the assets would be “turned into a mass of scrap metal in front of our invincible military power centered on the self-defense nuclear deterrence.”
North Korea continues to defy its United Nations obligations by developing nuclear weapons. The South’s military judged its neighbor’s latest ballistic missile test early Saturday to have failed, but it was the 50th known launch of its kind by the North since leader Kim Jong-un took power at the end of 2011.
Tensions have ramped up since U.S. President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, as Washington refuses to rule out a preemptive strike on North Korea.
