North Korea Blames U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy for Regional Chaos and Conflict

Kim Jong Un reportedly inspected a crucial munitions factory on the 14th, according to North Korean Central News Agency’s report on the 15th. The exact location and date of the inspection were not disclosed, but photos released by North Korean media suggest that Chairman Kim visited a missile factory. / Yonhap News

North Korean authorities have claimed that the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is causing regional and factional conflicts, leading to chaos.

According to the North Korean Central News Agency on the 18th, an article titled “Washington’s Indo-Pacific Strategy is a Geopolitical Confrontation Script Destroying Regional Peace and Stability” written by Ri Ji Won, a researcher of the Institute for American Studies of the DPRK Foreign Ministry, pointed out that “The U.S.-led security consultative bodies, such as the Quad of the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia, and AUKUS of the U.S., UK, and Australia, have led to the closure and factional confrontation, not freedom and openness.”

Furthermore, “The reality two years after the release of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy report clearly shows the hollowness of the free, open, prosperous, and stable regional construction that the current U.S. administration advocates,” and “The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy has brought instability and the risk of war to the region, not stability,” they argued.

They emphasized that “The U.S. is attempting to build an exclusive supply network that excludes regional countries by using the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF),” and “A stable supply network has not been established, and the process of integrating Asia-Pacific economic trade cooperation has been severely damaged.” The intention to indirectly pressurize China in the U.S.-China hegemonic war is interpreted as an attempt to add weight to the doubts of some experts.

In the meantime, the news agency claimed that “Due to the reckless military confrontation madness of the U.S. and its follower forces, the outbreak of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula, the world’s largest nuclear powder keg, is no longer a matter of possibility but a matter of time,” and “Neighbor countries have been forced to make an inevitable choice to strengthen their self-defense capabilities in the face of the security situation,” blaming the heightened military tension on the U.S., not on themselves.