President Yoon Suk Yeol said the North Korean regime will face destruction should it attempt a nuclear attack, in remarks delivered at the Armed Forces Day ceremony at Seoul Air Base on Tuesday.

“If North Korea ever tries to use a nuclear weapon, it will be met with a decisive and overwhelming response from our armed forces and alliance with the US. And that will be the day its regime ends,” he said.

The president said the kind of peace that depends on the good intentions of the enemy was a “mere mirage.” “The only way to secure peace is to enhance our strength,” he added.

He said South Korea’s alliance with the US has been upgraded to a “nuclear-based alliance” by the Washington Declaration signed by himself and US President Joe Biden in April last year.

“Our government will build on the solid South Korea-US alliance to further strengthen the security cooperation of South Korea, the US and Japan,” he said.

Yoon noted that since the 1950-53 Korean War, South Korea has grown its military power to become a major exporter of arms globally.

“We have walked the path of freedom, prosperity and peace. North Korea, on the other hand, insists on continuing down the path of regression,” he said.

He called North Korea’s launches of garbage balloons “despicable provocations.” From May, North Korea has periodically flown thousands of balloons carrying garbage toward the South, with the latest occasion being last week.

Yoon criticized North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for declaring the two Koreas separate, saying his regime has “gone so far as to reject reunification.”

He called out North Korea’s arms trade with Russia as being “illegal” and “in violation of international norms.”

The celebration of Armed Forces Day featured a parade of military hardware and a march of service men and women from all branches of the armed forces in the streets of Seoul.

Unveiled for the first time at the parade was the country’s Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile, designed to penetrate North Korean underground bunkers. The intermediate-range missile is capable of a warhead weighing about 8 tons, among the heaviest in the world.

In the skies, more than 40 aircraft including the first indigenous fighters the KF-21s flew in formation.

On the US Air Force B-1B strategic bomber being slated to appear over Seoul, North Korea threatened a “corresponding action” in a statement from its vice defense minister, Kim Kang-il.

In the statement, carried by its state-run Korea Central News Agency, the North Korean vice defense minister said the deployment of US strategic assets for the South Korean parade was nothing more than a “military bluff.”

In commemoration of the founding of its army, South Korea on this day launched the new Strategic Command dedicated to deterring and countering North Korea’s nuclear and weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

“As South Korea’s only strategic force for North Korean nuclear and WMD deterrence and response, we shoulder a great responsibility,” Lt. Gen. Jin Young-seung, the inaugural Strategic Commander, said.

He vowed to “do whatever it takes to protect the safety of our country and its people.”