North Korea will fire nuclear weapon if Kim is killed: Report
The constitutional change reportedly came after the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several senior Iranian officials during joint US-Israeli strikes on Tehran.
North Korea has revised its constitution to mandate an automatic retaliatory nuclear strike if leader Kim Jong-un is assassinated by a foreign adversary, reports The Telegraph.
The constitutional change reportedly came after the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several senior Iranian officials during joint US-Israeli strikes on Tehran.
The amendment was adopted during the first session of North Korea's 15th Supreme People's Assembly, which opened on 22 March in Pyongyang. South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) disclosed the revision during a briefing to senior government officials on Thursday.
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According to the NIS, Kim has command of the North's nuclear forces, but the changes codify procedures for retaliatory attacks in the event that he is incapacitated or killed.
The revised Article 3 of North Korea's nuclear policy law 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."
Andrei Lankov, a professor of history and international relations at Kookmin University in Seoul, said the policy may have existed previously but now carries greater weight after being enshrined in the constitution.
"Iran was the wake-up call," Lankov said. "North Korea saw the remarkable efficiency of the US-Israeli decapitation attacks, which immediately eliminated the greater part of the Iranian leadership, and they must now be terrified."
According to The Telegraph report, an attack designed to eliminate Kim and his immediate circle would be far harder to carry out than the attacks in Iran.
North Korea's borders are effectively sealed and the few foreign diplomats, aid workers and businesspeople from "friendly" nations who do enter the country are closely monitored, making the human intelligence that was critical to the success of the Iran attack impossible to obtain.
It has been reported that Israeli intelligence was able to pinpoint the location of the Iranian leaders after hacking into traffic cameras in Tehran – a tactic that cannot be replicated in Pyongyang because of its limited CCTV and tightly controlled intranet.
