NORTH Korean and Chinese officials have warned a new arms race looms in the Far East given the US decision to deploy nuclear-armed submarines to Korean waters.

Last week Washington announced the formation of a “nuclear consultative group” with Seoul, provoking anger in Pyongyang and Beijing.

Kim Yo Jong, deputy director of the ruling Workers Party comms department and sister to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said the decision confirmed the United States as the country’s “most hostile adversary” and that Pyongyang could not afford to treat President Joe Biden’s nuclear threats as “irresponsible remarks from a person in his dotage.

“The more our enemies are set on staging nuclear war exercises, the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula, the stronger our exercise of the right to self-defence will be in proportion,” she said.

Chinese military analyst Song Zhongping said the US had nothing to fear from North Korea and used its nuclear weapons programme as an excuse to deploy military assets to the region to threaten China and Russia.

“This will do nothing for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” he told Chinese media. 

China has already criticised the Aukus nuclear submarine pact between Britain, the US and Australia as a violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that will accelerate a Pacific arms race.

The United States is expanding its forward deployment of nuclear weapons across multiple theatres, with reports of US nuclear-armed bombers being stationed at Britain’s Lakenheath air base prompting protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The next Lakenheath protest is planned for Saturday May 20.