NK likely to make provocations around this month's key occasions: experts

Published : Oct 1, 2017 - 09:25 Updated : Oct 1, 2017 - 09:25

North Korea could carry out provocative acts in October when the country marks the anniversaries of its party's foundation and a former ruler's ascent to power, and China opens a key party meeting, experts said Sunday.

North Korea has used important national occasions as pretexts for military provocations and a show of force.

(Yonhap)

South Korean presidential office Cheong Wa Dae has recently raised the possibility that North Korea may launch a provocation on Oct. 10, the 72nd founding anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea.

In 2006, the North conducted its first nuclear test one day before the WPK founding anniversary.

Seoul's spy agency also said that Pyongyang could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs) on a standard trajectory toward the North Pacific around the party anniversary. The North conducted its sixth nuke test on Sept. 3 and lobbed two ICBMs in July.

Amid a fiery war of words, its leader Kim Jong-un last month warned that the United States will pay dearly for President Donald Trump threat to "totally destroy" the country.

North Korea's foreign minister later said that it could consider a detonation of a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. (Yonhap)