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U.S. Special Representative Sung Kim met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Kim Gunn and Funakoshi Takehiro, after a U.S. assessment that the North was preparing its Punggye-ri test site for what would be its seventh nuclear test.

“We are preparing for all contingencies in close coordination with our Japanese and ROK allies,” Kim said at the beginning of the meeting, referring to South Korea by the initials of its official name, the Republic of Korea.

This year, North Korea has tested several ballistic missiles, including one thought to be its largest intercontinental ballistic missile, in violation of U.N. resolutions.

“We want to make clear to the DPRK that its unlawful and destabilising activities have consequences and that the international community will not accept these actions as normal,” the U.S. envoy said, referring to North Korea.

South Korea’s newly appointed nuclear envoy, Kim Gunn, said North Korea’s “relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons will only end up strengthening our deterrence”.

“The course that Pyongyang is currently embarking on has only one inevitable destination: reduce security for North Korea itself,” the South Korean diplomat said.

Last week, the United States called for more U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its ballistic missile launches, but China and Russia vetoed the suggestion, publicly splitting the U.N. Security Council on North Korea for the first time since it started punishing it in 2006, when it conducted its first nuclear test.

Japan’s Funakoshi stressed the need for coordination, vowing to “enhance regional deterrence, including trilateral security cooperation”.

The officials said the door for dialogue was open and expressed concern over the COVID-19 situation in North Korea.

“We have made very clear directly to Pyongyang that we are open to diplomacy,” Sung Kim said later at a separate conference in Seoul, noting that Washington was willing to discuss items of interest to Pyongyang, such as sanctions relief.

“So far they have shown no interest.”

The most important thing was for the three countries to present a united front to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the U.S. envoy said.

“When he sees that we are coordinating very closely with partners and allies I hope this persuades him that the only viable path is diplomacy with us,” he said.

China and Russia were clearly not interested in working with the United States to manage North Korea’s nuclear and missile arsenal, Kim said, when asked about their veto of new sanctions.

“We’re not asking them for a favour, it’s in their interest,” he said.

The United States would not link humanitarian aid for North Korea as it battles COVID to denuclearization, U.S. officials said.

“We passed the message through our regular channel, that we were willing to provide humanitarian cooperation focused on COVID relief including vaccines,” Kim said. “But we haven’t heard back.”

It was time to look for new approaches to North Korea because Kim Jong Un would never willingly give up nuclear weapons, said Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who now serves as a member of parliament in the South.

“Nuclear weapons are the core to unite the whole North Korean people and ensure continuation of Kim family rule,” he told the conference.

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Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi, Dogyun Kim, Daewoung Kim, and Josh Smith; Editing by Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-south-korea-japan-envoys-meet-north-korea-nuclear-tension-2022-06-03/

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North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan Wednesday, according to reports.

Japan’s Defense Ministry and South Korea’s military confirmed the launches, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency and the Japan Times reported Wednesday afternoon local time.

“Our military is tracking and monitoring related movements and maintaining a readiness posture,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters, according to Yonhap. The launch reportedly came from the Pyongyang area minutes after 12 noon.

NORTH KOREA PREPARING NUCLEAR TEST FOR FIRST TIME IN YEARS, INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS SAY

The launch is just the latest in a series of weapons tests from the nuclear-armed country, which likes to flex its strength, and days after leader Kim Jong Un warned that North Korea could preemptively use its nuclear arsenal if threatened.
The Japanese Coast Guard urged vessels traveling off Japanese coasts to stay away from any possible fragments.

The launch also comes days before newly-elected President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol takes office in South Korea.

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North Korea has a history of raising animosities with weapons tests when Seoul and Washington inaugurate new governments.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/north-korea-fires-ballistic-missile-nuclear-threats

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SEOUL, South Korea – Ever since President Biden took office, North Korea has been escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula by testing its ballistic missile programs including its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Experts in the region believe the Biden policy is failing and needs recalibrating, or risk yet another foreign policy headache.

NORTH KOREA MAKING PREPARATIONS FOR POSSIBLE NUCLEAR TEST: OFFICIALS

Since the beginning of this year, North Korea has repeatedly tested its missile programs and has already conducted the 19th round of missile testing on its various ballistic missile weapons. Following the unprecedented rounds of the North’s missile testing, Washington and outside experts have accused the regime of completing all the preparatory steps for its seventh nuclear test.

“North Korea is not at the top of the agenda for this administration and there’s little interest in fundamentally revisiting the outcomes of last year’s policy review based on new developments since then,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Pandit continued, “Right now, there’s also probably little the administration can do to deter North Korea from proceeding with its military modernization objectives, which Kim Jong Un has committed to,” he said, adding that “the North Koreans are unlikely to reciprocate U.S. interest in talks until they’ve completed their modernization efforts.”

Considering the tensions on the Korean Peninsula due to the North’s missile test with the absence of dialogue between the countries, experts warn that it has demonstrated that the Biden administration’s policy on North Korea has so far been ineffective and cannot tackle North Korea issues practically.

NORTH KOREA FIRES BALLISTIC MISSILE AFTER MAKING NUCLEAR THREATS

Sung-yoon Lee, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said that North Korea has not been responsive to the Biden administration’s overtures because “it is not the time [for North Korea] to be engaged [in the dialogue] but to increase its net worth.”

“Like an elite athlete conscious of his performance before the next contract negotiations, North Korea needs to enhance its net value, which means threat capability to the region and the U.S.,” Lee said.

Despite its messages to renew the stalled nuclear talks, North Korea has continuously tested its missile weapons and Kim Jong Un withdrew his self-moratorium on nuclear and ICBM testing in March. During a military parade this April, state media reported Kim saying that while the mission of his nuclear forces was to deter war, “our nukes can never be confined to the single mission of war deterrent even at a time when a situation we are not desirous of at all is created on this land.”

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kim-jong-un-prepares-nuclear-test-biden-approach-north-korea-failing-experts-warn

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Kim’s comments, published by North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Saturday, didn’t include any direct criticism of the US or its southern neighbor amid a prolonged deadlock in nuclear diplomacy during the three days of discussions that wrapped up on Friday.

Kim defended his accelerating weapons development as a rightful exercise of sovereign rights to self-defense and set more “militant tasks” to be pursued by his armed forces and military scientists, according to the agency. But the report didn’t mention any specific goal or plan on testing activity, including detonating a nuclear device.

The plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee also reviewed key state affairs, including efforts to slow a COVID-19 outbreak the North first acknowledged last month and progress in economic goals Kim is desperate to keep alive amid strengthened virus restrictions.

“[Kim] said the right to self-defense is an issue of defending sovereignty, clarifying once again the party’s invariable fighting principle of power for power and head-on contest,” the KCNA said.

The meeting came amid a provocative streak in missile demonstrations that jolts an old pattern of brinkmanship aimed at forcing the US to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

North Korea has for years mastered the art of manufacturing diplomatic crises with weapons tests and threats before eventually offering negotiations aimed at extracting concessions.

In a move that may have future foreign-policy implications, Kim promoted during the meeting a veteran diplomat with deep experience in handling US affairs as his new foreign minister.

Choe Son Hui, who is among the North’s most powerful women along with the leader’s sister Kim Yo Jong, had a major role in preparing Jong Un for his meetings with then-US president Donald Trump in 2018 and 2019. Talks between Pyongyang and Washington derailed after the collapse of Jong Un’s second meeting with Trump in February 2019, when the Americans rejected North Korea’s demands for a major release of US-led sanctions on the North in exchange for limited disarmament steps.

Choe replaces Ri Son Gwon, a hardliner with a military background who, during the meeting, was announced as Jong Un’s new point person on South Korea.

Putting the pressureNorth Korea has a history of dialing up pressure on Seoul when it doesn’t get what it wants from Washington. While the KCNA’s report on the meeting didn’t include any comment specifically referring to South Korea, it said the participants clarified “principles and strategic and tactical orientations to be maintained in the struggle against the enemy and in the field of foreign affairs.”

North Korea has already set an annual record in ballistic launches through the first half of 2022, firing 31 missiles over 18 different launch events, including its first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in nearly five years.

Jong Un may up the ante soon as US and South Korean officials say North Korea has all but finished preparations to detonate a nuclear device at its testing ground in the northeastern town of Punggye-ri. The site had been inactive since hosting the North’s sixth nuclear test in September 2017, when it said it detonated a thermonuclear bomb designed for its ICBMs.

The North’s unusually fast pace in testing activity underscores its leader’s dual intent to advance his arsenal and pressure the Biden administration over long-stalled nuclear diplomacy, experts say.

Jong Un’s pressure campaign hasn’t been slowed by a COVID-19 outbreak spreading across the largely unvaccinated autocracy of 26 million people.

During the meeting, North Korea maintained a dubious claim that its outbreak was easing, despite outside concerns of huge death rates, given the country’s broken health care system.

North Korea has restricted the movement of people and supplies between regions, but large groups of workers have continued to gather at farms and industrial sites, being driven to shore up an economy decimated by decades of mismanagement, sanctions and pandemic border closures.

Jong Un said during the meeting the country’s “maximum emergency” antivirus campaign of the past month has strengthened the economic sector’s ability to cope with the coronavirus.

Source: https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/06/12/news/world/kim-reaffirms-arms-buildup-at-party-meet/1847026

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U.S. Special Representative Sung Kim met his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Kim Gunn and Funakoshi Takehiro, after a U.S. assessment that the North was preparing its Punggye-ri test site for what would be its seventh nuclear test.

“We are preparing for all contingencies in close coordination with our Japanese and ROK allies,” Kim said at the beginning of the meeting, referring to South Korea by the initials of its official name, the Republic of Korea.

This year, North Korea has tested several ballistic missiles, including one thought to be its largest intercontinental ballistic missile, in violation of U.N. sanctions. read more

“We want to make clear to the DPRK that its unlawful and destabilizing activities have consequences and that the international community will not accept these actions as normal,” the U.S. envoy said, referring to North Korea.

South Korea’s newly appointed nuclear envoy, Kim Gunn, said North Korea’s “relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons will only end up strengthening our deterrence”.

“The course that Pyongyang is currently embarking on has only one inevitable destination: reduce security for North Korea itself,” the South Korean diplomat said.

Last week, the United States called for more U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its ballistic missile launches, but China and Russia vetoed the suggestion, publicly splitting the U.N. Security Council on North Korea for the first time since it started punishing it in 2006, when it conducted its first nuclear test. read more

Japan’s Funakoshi stressed the need for coordination, vowing to “enhance regional deterrence, including trilateral security cooperation”.

The officials said the door for dialogue was open and expressed concern over the COVID-19 situation in North Korea.

Earlier, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said the United States would not link humanitarian aid for North Korea as it battles COVID to denuclearization.

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Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi, Dogyun Kim and Daewoung Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-south-korea-japan-envoys-meet-north-korea-nuclear-tension-2022-06-03/

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Authorities in Seoul said the missiles were fired in the space of less than an hour from the Sunan area in Pyongyang.

It comes just a day after US President Joe Biden left the region, following a trip that saw him vowing to bolster measures to deter North Korea.

North Korea has been test-firing a flurry of ballistic missiles since the beginning of this year.

Japan confirmed at least two launches happened on Wednesday but acknowledged there may have been more.

Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said the first missile flew about 300km (186 miles) with a maximum altitude of around 550km, while the second, reaching as high as 50km, travelled around 750km.

Mr. Kishi criticized the launches, saying they were “not acceptable” adding that it would “threaten the peace, stability and safety of Japan and the international community”.

In a meeting convened after the missile launch, South Korea’s National Security Council called the test a “grave provocation”, the presidential office said.

The launches came hours after Mr. Biden departed for the US on Tuesday evening, after a five-day trip that saw him visit South Korea and Japan.

US and South Korean officials had earlier warned that North Korea appeared ready for another weapons test, possibly during the Biden visit.

During his visit to Seoul over the weekend, Mr. Biden and his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk-yeol agreed to hold bigger military drills and deploy more US strategic assets if necessary to deter North Korea’s intensifying weapons tests.

Mr. Biden had said the United States was “prepared for anything North Korea does”.

The timing of these launches is not an accident – just hours after President Biden completed his trip to Asia, and days after he agreed with South Korea’s president to bolster their defenses against North Korea.

For weeks intelligence suggested North Korea was planning to test something major while the president was here. Slightly less provocatively, it has waited until he had left, but only just. Air Force One hadn’t touched down on US tarmac before the missiles were fired.

At their weekend summit, President Biden and President Yoon said they were ready to take on the threat of North Korea together. This was their first test. They have responded quickly, condemning the launches, while joint-firing missiles of their own.

This marks another escalation by North Korea, which, over the past six months has become increasingly aggressive. But the concern is over what comes next. Evidence is mounting that North Korea is preparing to test a nuclear weapon. This would be its first nuclear test in five years and a major step-up.

Missiles amidst COVID ’emergency’
The latest launches come as North Korea struggles to contain a suspected outbreak of COVID amongst its largely unvaccinated population of 25 million.

More than a million people have now been sickened by what Pyongyang is calling a “fever”, and more than 68 people have died since late April, the authorities say.

On 12 May, North Korea test-fired ballistic missiles the same day that Mr. Kim declared an “emergency” over the COVID outbreak.

South Korea has said it offered humanitarian aid, but Pyongyang is yet to respond.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61560786

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SEOUL — President Joe Biden on Friday begins his first trip to Asia since he took office amid some of his lowest domestic approval numbers as he looks to make strides in countering China’s saber-rattling and economic influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Biden is scheduled to spend two days in South Korea, where he’ll showcase new economic investments in the U.S. by some of the country’s top companies, including Hyundai’s plans to open a plant in Georgia.

He then plans to fly to Tokyo for a meeting of an alliance among the U.S., Australia, Japan and India that’s aimed at checking China’s increasing military might.

The war in Ukraine looms over Biden’s four-day trip to the other side of the globe, with leaders planning to press Indian President Narendra Modi to take a firm position against Russia’s invasion and the U.S. hoping the global response to Moscow’s aggression might deter China from moving on Taiwan.

“The message we’re trying to send on this trip is a message of an affirmative vision of what the world can look like if the democracies and open societies of the world stand together,” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters Wednesday. “We think that message will be heard everywhere. We think it will be heard in Beijing.”

Also potentially overshadowing Biden’s trip is growing concern within the administration that North Korea could conduct a nuclear test or launch an intercontinental ballistic missile to coincide with his visit. U.S. officials have said intelligence shows that either or both is possible. If either happens, it would be the first time North Korea has taken such a step in several years.

Sullivan told reporters before Biden’s departure that the administration was prepared “to make both short- and longer-term adjustments to our military posture as necessary” to try to deter Pyongyang from further provocation and defend U.S. allies in the region.

At the same time, the U.S. is keeping open the possibility for diplomatic dialogue with North Korea while noting that there has been scant contact, and it could extend an offer to assist with a Covid outbreak in the isolated country, including by providing vaccines.

Biden, notably, isn’t scheduled to visit the demilitarized zone that divides North Korea and South Korea. The White House didn’t explain why. White House officials said the focus of the trip is economic initiatives, pointing out that Biden did visit the demilitarized zone as vice president.

Biden does plan to visit with U.S. troops in the region.

While he is in Seoul, Biden is scheduled to meet with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was recently elected, and attend a state dinner. He’s expected to visit a Samsung factory as part of his emphasis on efforts in South Korea’s technology and manufacturing industries to take more of their operations — and jobs — to the U.S.

Biden also plans to announce a new economic initiative, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which the White House says is aimed at expanding trade, fortifying supply chains and tackling climate change.

The Asia tour kicks off by highlighting new foreign investments in the U.S. economy as the administration looks to stress an economic message when the overwhelming majority of Americans — 75 percent in the latest NBC News poll — believe the country is on the wrong track.

Only 33 percent of all respondents and just 20 percent of independents in that poll said they approved of Biden’s handling of the economy.

A significant part of the visit to Tokyo is expected to be a meeting with the leaders of the so-called Quad, an alliance of the U.S., India, Australia and Japan. In addition to meeting with his host, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Biden is also expected to hold one-on-one meetings with Modi and the winner of Saturday’s Australian election.

Biden officials have worked to grow the Quad into a more substantive economic and military force that, coupled with new economic initiatives, is designed to send a message to China.

Michael Green, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, told reporters before Biden’s trip that “the subtext of the Quad is that this is a powerful alignment of maritime democracies concerned about security and stability and the balance of power as China asserts itself.”

Biden has repeatedly argued that the 21st century will be defined by the contest between democracies like the U.S. and autocracies like Russia and China.

His trip to Asia is designed to illustrate that, just as he has intensively worked this year to maintain unity among European allies in the face of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, he can build a similar network of partners in the Eastern Hemisphere as a buffer against China — particularly any considerations of exercising its expanding military might.

China, even more than Russia, has been central to Biden’s foreign policy approach over the past decade, since he traveled to Beijing as vice president to hold the first extensive meetings with China’s future president, Xi Jinping.

And as the administration has considered the joint actions against Russia that have dominated its foreign policy agenda this year, it has done so mindful that China would be watching every move.

Carol E. Lee
Carol E. Lee is an NBC News correspondent.

Mike Memoli
Mike Memoli is an NBC News correspondent.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-makes-first-presidential-trip-asia-war-europe-looms-large-rcna29603

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Biden’s administration, however, could soon find that approach hard to sustain, with senior officials from the U.S., South Korea and Japan concluding that a North Korean nuclear test — its first in nearly five years — is likely imminent.

“The United States assesses that the DPRK is preparing its Punggye-ri test site and could be ready to conduct a test there as early as this month, which would be its seventh test. This assessment is consistent with the DPRK’s own recent public statements,” U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter said on May 6, using the acronym for the North’s formal name.

At a large-scale military parade late last month, Kim vowed in a speech before thousands of goose-stepping soldiers that he would speed up the development of his nuclear arsenal. At the same time, he delivered a chilling warning about its potential use should war erupt on the Korean Peninsula.

Japan has echoed the U.S. view, with Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi pointing to Kim’s stated commitment to the continued buildup of his nuclear weapons program despite crushing United Nations sanctions.

“It’s clear that North Korea intends to turn its back on the international community and continue its nuclear development, as evidenced by its repeated references to strengthening its nuclear arsenal,” Kishi said earlier this month. “This is absolutely unacceptable.”

A return to the headlines?
At the Punggye-ri site — which was closed in 2018 after Kim announced a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests, with some tunnels dramatically blown up — recent satellite imagery has captured work to restore at least one tunnel, likely for its next nuclear test.

The North, likely well aware of spy satellites flying above, has done little to deny that a test could be imminent.

“Preparations for a resumption of nuclear testing are clearly underway,” said Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.

This year, the North has unleashed a record-breaking number of missile launches, conducting 16 tests — including one of an intercontinental ballistic missile that Japan’s Defense Ministry believes is capable of traveling 15,000 kilometers, putting the entire U.S. within striking distance.

The ICBM test in late March put the final nail in the coffin for Kim’s self-imposed moratorium on longer-range missile launches.

A nuclear test, however, would not only provide Pyongyang with crucial data for diversifying its arsenal of nuclear bombs, but also thrust the isolated country back into the spotlight, some experts say.

“Short-range missile tests from North Korea barely register these days for the international community, in part because we’ve become numb to the frequency of such tests, but also because of the Ukraine crisis,” said Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow and North Korea expert at the Brookings Institution think tank. “A nuclear test would certainly be a wake-up call.”

Timing ripe for nuke test
While the timing of such a move remains unclear, especially as North Korea grapples with its first publicly acknowledged outbreak of COVID-19, officials in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have all said that Pyongyang is likely to finish preparations for a test at the Punggye-ri site sometime this month.

Within that time frame, Kim has a number of opportunities to play a disruptive role.

Biden is scheduled to visit Seoul and Tokyo for five days from Friday for meetings with new South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The U.S. president is then due to hold talks with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan for a “Quad” summit in Tokyo.

But the recently revealed COVID-19 crisis in North Korea could put any plans for a nuclear test on ice as the country focuses its energies on the outbreak. State media reported Tuesday that the country had confirmed 269,510 more cases of “fever” symptoms as of a day earlier, bringing the total to 1,483,060, while the death toll rose to 56.

Kim has said the outbreak is causing “a great upheaval” not seen since the country’s founding. On Tuesday, state media said he had ordered the mobilization of the military for a mission aimed at “defusing the public health crisis.”

Even if Kim chooses to hold off on a seventh nuke test this month, precedent holds that he’s still likely to take such a step sometime early in the Yoon administration.

Yoon took office just last week and used his inauguration speech to highlight his hawkish stance on the South’s neighbor, calling for Pyongyang’s “complete denuclearization” and labeling its increasingly sophisticated weapons as a threat not only to the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia but to the globe as well.

While Yoon did say that “the door to dialogue will remain open” to peacefully resolving the nuclear threat, offering up the possibility of economic aid to the North, this was only on the condition that Pyongyang first give up its nukes — a nonstarter for Kim, who views the weapons as essential for the survival of his regime.

“If the past is any predictor of future behavior, North Korea has tended to escalate tensions within the first couple of months of a new South Korean president, irrespective of political party,” Yeo said.

A ‘tactical’ advantage?
Although the North’s last nuclear test, in 2017, was its most powerful blast to date, observers say any new test would likely be of a smaller battlefield weapon known as a “tactical” nuclear bomb that could be deployed on its growing number of short- and midrange missiles capable of striking South Korea and Japan.

“Testing a lower-yield device would make sense, since Kim Jong Un has been talking about the development of ‘tactical’ nuclear warheads since his remarks at the Eighth Party Congress in January 2021,” Pollack said of a rare meeting of the North’s ruling party’s top officials during which Kim unveiled a wish list of weapons he was seeking.

While Kim has described his country’s “super large nuclear warheads” as already being in production, there has been a noticeable shift to focusing on the smaller tactical weapons. Indeed, state-run media was clear in its description of a test last month of the country’s newest short-range ballistic missile, which it said was “of great significance in drastically improving … the operation of tactical nukes.”

If the North were to test a smaller-yield device, which appears increasingly likely given the condition of the Punggye-ri testing site, it would give them a potent weapon that could be used as leverage in any return to long-stalled nuclear negotiations with the U.S.

It could also add momentum to an already unfolding arms race on the Korean Peninsula and with Japan.

“Testing smaller warheads would add more versatility to the regime’s toolbox of coercion and extortion,” said Yeo. “A successful test of smaller tactical nukes would definitely spur open debate about bringing tactical nuclear weapons back” to South Korea.

Yeo said that although Yoon’s team backed the idea at one point during the presidential election race, “it’s unlikely that it would support the deployment of such weapons, as this could lead to further instability in Northeast Asia. Moreover, the U.S. would likely oppose such a decision.”

A test of a North Korean tactical weapon, however, could add to growing support for Seoul developing an indigenous nuclear weapons program — which may even be the preferred route, according to a February survey that found a robust majority of public support in South Korea for the possession of the country’s own arsenal over stationing U.S. nukes there.

For Japan, the repeated missile and nuclear tests — including a number of launches that have landed in Japanese waters and territory — have been a key driver in Tokyo’s push to shed its postwar defense constraints. Most recently, Kishida has vowed to consider “all options” to strengthen the country’s defenses, including acquiring a so-called counterstrike capability that would be, in part, intended to deter a North Korean attack.

Ultimately, though, much will rest on what Kim decides to do.

For his part, Pollack believes that North Korea would have little to gain from pursuing tactical weapons, given its estimated arsenal of 20 to 60 warheads, steady supply of fissile material for more bombs and its advances in longer-range missile technology.

“They are already capable of striking essentially any target of interest, anywhere,” he said. “Kim Jong Un continually tries to alchemize nuclear weapons into the respect of the world, but the formula seems to have escaped him.”

Kim’s quest to diversify his arsenal as his country faces down the virus as well as serious food shortages, Pollack said, is “especially striking.”

“It seems like a distraction. But perhaps it’s easier to contend with external dangers than internal ones.”

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/05/17/asia-pacific/north-korea-nuclear-test-tactical-weapons/

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