US President Joe Biden warned on Wednesday that a North Korean nuclear attack against the United States or its allies would result in the end of the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“A North Korean nuclear attack against the United States or its allies is unacceptable and will result in the end of any regime that perpetuates such action,” he told a White House press conference with his South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk-yeol. .

This is one of the toughest messages the US president has delivered on North Korea since he came to power in January 2021.

Biden and Yoon signed an agreement Wednesday to strengthen their military cooperation against North Korea and allow a nuclear-armed US submarine to dock on the Korean peninsula for the first time in 40 years.

The pact, known as the Washington Declaration, includes the creation of a bilateral consultation mechanism that will allow South Korea to actively participate in US plans to respond to any nuclear incident in the region, including a hypothetical attack. North Korean.

The agreement, however, does not contemplate the deployment of nuclear warheads on the peninsula, Biden emphasized during the press conference.

The United States withdrew its last nuclear warheads from the Korean peninsula in 1991, when the two Koreas pledged in a joint declaration not to produce or deploy nuclear weapons, an agreement Pyongyang has repeatedly violated.

During the Cold War in the 1970s, US nuclear submarines frequently visited South Korean ports, up to two or three times a month, but stopped in the following decade, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

In general terms, the agreement seeks to reassure Seoul in the face of the advance of North Korea’s nuclear program and after the turbulent presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021), which threatened to withdraw US troops from South Korea.

North Korea has rejected US and South Korean offers to resume talks and has conducted a record number of weapons tests in the past two years, even experimenting with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could hit cities. americans.