North Korea Threatens Nuclear War Against the U.S., Because Today Is a Day That Ends in 'Y'

Today in Kim Jong-un news.

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North Korea announced via the state-run Korean Central News Agency that it would respond to this week's joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises with a "preemptive and offensive nuclear strike," CNN reports.

"As the joint military exercises to be staged by the enemies are regarded as the most undisguised nuclear war drills aimed to infringe upon the sovereignty of the DPRK," the statement read, "Its military counteraction will be more preemptive and offensive nuclear strike to cope with them."

The exercises are an annual affair, and so is the word salad of verbal belligerence from the hermit kingdom. The North Koreans never take too kindly to U.S. operations with their neighbors to the south—a key geopolitical ally in the region—but tensions are running especially high at the moment. The U.N. Security Council voted to ramp up sanctions against Kim Jong-un and the renegade state after it conducted nuclear tests and a missile launch in express violation of previous international sanctions. Whether North Korea actually detonated a hydrogen bomb last month is in significant doubt, but this pattern of behavior has caused concern regardless. 

The Korean Central News Agency called the new punishment "unprecedented and gangster-like."


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