US troops deployed to South Korea remain at a gunpoint of the Korean People’s Army, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a commentary published in the Rodong Sinmun official newspaper on Wednesday.
The commentary comes in response to the Pentagon’s decision to relocate the 8th Army’s headquarters from Seoul to Pyeongtaek, a port city located some 70 kilometers to the south of South Korea’s capital.
The news agency said “this decision changes nothing.” “For North Korea it will be easy to destroy the US bases located nearby taking into account that the Korean People’s Army is capable of turning into ash even a continental part of the United States,” it stressed.
Authors of the commentary warn that “South Korean proxy forces which cooperate with the US – the arch enemy of the Korean nation – won’t be able to avoid punishment.”
Some 28,500 US troops are currently based in South Korea. The presence of the US troops comes as a result of the 1950-1953 conflict on the peninsula which ended in signing an agreement on a temporary truce. Formally, North Korea and the US are in a state of war. Pyongyang’s repeated proposals on signing a peace treaty instead of an agreement on truce have not brought about Washington’s positive response.