North Korea has adopted a new nuclear policy which orders an immediate atomic missile strike if the country’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is assassinated in a foreign attack. The so-called ‘dead man switch’ has now been added to the isolationist nation’s constitution following the first session of North Korea’s 15th Supreme People’s Assembly held in Pyongyang earlier this year.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has now released details of the worrying new development after learning it’s northern neighbour would launch a nuclear attack if Kim Jong Un dies. The dictator, believed to be around 44, is the third Supreme Leader to rule with an iron fist over the tiny communist nation, following in the footsteps of his father, Kim Jong Il, and grandfather, Kim Il Sung.
North Korea has been almost completely cut-off from the rest of the world since the end of the Korean War in 1953. The militaristic nation still enjoys close ties with Russia and China, but regularly threatens its more Western-looking neighbours, including South Korea and Japan. In April, several missiles were launched from North Korea into the Sea of Japan, sparking angry protests from surrounding nations.
Now it has emerged North Korea has enshrined a new doomsday mandate in its constitution threatening to spark World War III by launching a nuclear weapon if Kim Jong Un is killed.
Many believe the portly dictator is lining his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, up to be his successor. But previous reports have stated North Korean generals may attempt to stage a coup once her father dies. The nuclear option could also have been put in place to protect Kim Jong Un from attacks within his own country.
Under the new revised law, Kim Jong Un remains the main point of decision for unleashing North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, just as US President Donald Trump presides over American atomic weapons.
But in an update to North Korean law, if there is any attack on the country’s nuclear command-and-control system, namely Kim Jon Un himself, then it an immediate retaliatory nuclear strike would be required.
The revision Article 3 of the North Korean constitution states: “If the command-and-control system over the state’s nuclear forces is placed in danger by hostile forces’ attacks… a nuclear strike shall be launched automatically and immediately.”
