AFP Contributor

SEOUL—The defection on Thursday of a North Korean soldier weaving his way across the DMZ is the latest in an accumulation of incidents putting not only the Korean Peninsula but much of East Asia on the razor’s edge of a crisis out of anyone’s ability to control.

The soldier, spotted by thermal imaging as he made his way across the heavily mined demilitarized zone, presumably is providing testimony about the problems of morale and hunger afflicting tens of thousands of North Korean troops within 20 miles of the line.

“As with the outbreak of World War I, it takes only one short-sighted or highly biased leader taking one needless gamble, or misconceiving just one action by the other side, to put the gears of war in motion.”

— Van Jackson, ‘On the Brink: Trump, Kim and the Threat of Nuclear War’

These are the facts about his country and especially the military that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un does not want known. And it’s to stave off simmering discontent exacerbated by sanctions and poor crops that Kim Jong Un is testing missiles and rocket systems—prime examples of threats that could send the region hurtling toward disaster, the United States along with it.

You may recall that President Donald Trump used to laud a supposed end to Pyongyang’s missile tests as a trumph for his weird personal diplomacy love-in with Kim. When new tests started, Trump declared the North Koreans “really haven’t tested missiles other than, you know, smaller ones.” When more tests happened last week, Trump said they were “short-range missiles, and many people have those missiles.” And Wednesday Kim sent some more of them aloft.

In fact, Kim has confirmed the tests are far from routine. The more they test, the more dangerous the standoff and no amount of happy talk can wish that away

Kim himself guided the latest test-firing of what Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency called “a newly developed large-caliber multiple launch guided rocket system.” That would suggest they have advanced their technical ability to strike anywhere in South Korea, notably the sprawling new American base, Camp Humphreys, 40 miles southeast of Seoul.

“The tactical data and technical characteristics of the new-type large-caliber guided ordnance rocket,” said KCNA in typically convoluted North Korean syntax, “reached the numerical values of its design, and verified the combat effectiveness of the overall system.”

Countering Trump’s dismissal of the importance of North Korean testing, Kim’s news agency continued in NorKspeak. It said the test-firing “would be an inescapable distress to the forces becoming a fat target of the weapon.”

Those comments coincided with the arrival in Bangkok of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and nuclear negotiator Stephen Biegun for an annual Asian regional forum at which Pompeo hopes to see North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on the sidelines, but North Korea has said pointedly that Ri won’t be there.

“In a game of dare and double-dare, North Korean tests show the fragility of the North-South diplomacy and the perils of wishful thinking.”
In any case, Pompeo does not have to talk to Ri to know the test-firing Wednesday was a warning: Do not stage even small-scale exercises in South Korea this month, Kim is telling Washington and Seoul. And please lift those sanctions—or we may not cooperate on talks that Pompeo says are seriously in the works.

In a game of dare and double-dare, North Korean tests show the fragility of the North-South diplomacy and the perils of wishful thinking: Trump’s friend Kim isn’t going to have these missiles armed with real warheads, primed to fire at live targets, is he? Can’t we shrug off his latest shots as indeed “solemn warnings” against “war mongers” while the U.S. and South Korea gear up for small-scale, computer-driven military exercises?

Gingerly, South Korea’s National Security Council, avoiding outright condemnation, expressed “strong concerns” about tests that would have “a negative impact.” That was enough for South Korea’s defense minister, Jeong Kyeong-doo, to include North Korea again “in the concept of an enemy,” much though the South’s leftist president, Moon Jae-in, objects to applying the E-word to his northern neighbor.

The latest North Korean salvo didn’t go too far, about 150 miles off the North’s east coast—shorter range than the two missiles fired a week ago but once again just fine for Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. base on foreign soil, where 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed

“Recent missiles are guided short-range at a lower altitude,” says Choi Jin-wook, former director of the Korea Institute of National Unification. They’re “more accurate and hard to be intercepted”—even by PAC-3, the most advanced surface-to-air counter-missile system.

It’s not just those upcoming war games that are upsetting the North Koreans. They also hate the prospect of the South Korean air force flying the latest F-35 stealth aircraft. With the South due to acquire 40 of them from the U.S. in the next two years, the North’s state press agency says, “We have no other choice but to develop and test the special armaments to completely destroy the lethal weapons reinforced in South Korea.”

“What if a South Korean plane hit a Russian bomber with one of those warning shots?”

The North Korean strategy is basic. “I believe North Korea is getting very frustrated with the U.S. and wants to pressure Mr. Trump,” says Choi. At the same time, considering Moon’s eagerness for reconciliation with the North, “South Korea is an easy hostage” that can be used “to pressure Washington.”

How better to intimidate the South Koreans? While “talking loudly about reconciliation and cooperation” the South Koreans go on “opening a gate to invading the north,” declared the KCNA. In this combustible mix, experts see tensions worsening as North Korea presses Moon to compromise and the danger arises of an “accident” or unscripted incident.

In an uncertain atmosphere, who knows what spark might ignite a conflagration?

“As with the outbreak of World War I,” writes Van Jackson in On the Brink: Trump, Kim and the Threat of Nuclear War, “it takes only one short-sighted or highly biased leader taking one needless gamble, or misconceiving just one action by the other side, to put the gears of war in motion.”

Inexorably, those gears are grinding. Trump may try to soothe those who doubt Kim Jong Un’s intentions, but one of the two shots fired last week was not exactly short-range as he contended. It soared more than 400 miles—plenty far enough to hit key targets in Japan—on a course that made it look like a model of a Russian Iskander which is capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads.

Despite “the most optimistic of projections,” writes Jackson, “policymakers and the public must remain attentive to the risks of nuclear war.”

And nukes are not the only imminent menace. Before Kim pressed the button on those missiles last week, South Korean warplanes, F15s and F16s, fired flares and 300 warning shots at a Russian A50 early warning and control aircraft reconnoitering over South Korean waters also claimed by Japan.

That was the first time Seoul’s forces have fired in the direction of a foreign plane, begging the question, what would it take for overflights and intrusions to turn into bloody shootouts?

The same day, two Chinese H6 bombers and two Russian TU 95 bombers flew in tandem around South Korea’s KADIZ, Korean Air Defense Identification Zone, the much larger area in which planes are free to fly while transponders relay where they are to the South Koreans.

What were the Chinese and Russians trying to prove? Was the dual mission timed for National Security Adviser John Bolton’s visit to Korea and Japan? Or were they out to show who’s boss over South Korea, which is now torn between the need for its military commanders to hone their computer skills in war games with the Americans and the desire of Moon to appease a nuclear-armed North?

Maybe China’s President Xi Jinping is still sore about Moon accepting THAAD, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense monster run by American soldiers way south of Seoul. The Russians don’t like THAAD either. Could it be they sent those planes around the periphery of South Korea to make that point? They both think THAAD is capable of getting into their own computer systems even though the Americans say its only mission is to shoot down high-flying North Korean missiles in a real war.

The question assumes urgency as South Korean and U.S. officials say they’ll definitely go ahead with those joint exercises. Missile tests, on top of Chinese and Russian overflights, raise the specter of a doomsday scenario even as South Korea tries to stay on friendly terms with China as well as Russia, not to mention North Korea in an era of rapprochement.

Then there’s the great power to the east, Japan, with which Korea is in an ugly dispute over Japanese reluctance to pay still more compensation to workers forced to serve as slave labor in Japanese factories in World War II.

The Japanese often send planes in hot pursuit of Chinese aircraft, scaring them away from the Senkaku Islands, held by Japan but claimed by China, which calls them Diaoyu. And the Japanese are not sending warplanes over disputed Korean waters, not even around Dokdo, those enormous twin rocks that Japan calls Takeshima and which it claims. But those outcrops are potential flashpoints defended by 50 lonely South Korean policemen way out there in the Sea of Japan, known to Koreans as the East Sea.

“Only weeks ago, the DMZ seemed a symbol of progress toward peace as Trump stepped across. Now we see a North Korean soldier coming the other way through a minefield.”

What if, accidentally, a Japanese plane veered off course over Dokdo and got shot at? Koreans would undoubtedly cheer if the plane were hit, such is the heightened nationalist ire after Japan vindictively cut off export of essential chemicals needed for the semiconductors that are the backbone of the South Korean economy.

And what if a South Korean plane hit a Russian bomber with one of those warning shots? Or the Chinese got really mad about the Americans spying on them via THAAD and sent warplanes over South Korean territory?

And what about the new submarine Kim Jong Un was just inspecting? Defense officials say it’s built to hold three submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Ok, he’s not ordering the firing of anything bearing a warhead—yet—but what if?

Meanwhile, we are watching the steady deterioration of the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Most U.S. troops stay inside the high barbed-wire surrounding Camp Humphreys as policy-makers quake over provoking anti-American protests or otherwise upsetting the Moon government.

But what if an accident did happen and U.S. forces fanned into the countryside, not on war games but for real?

David Straub, a retired senior U.S. diplomat with years of experience in Seoul, sees “the much bigger concern” as “the continued undermining of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and de facto acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.” That result, he believes, “would not only be terrible in itself, it would likely contribute to much greater instability in regional and even global affairs.”

“I’m not terribly worried about an accidental outbreak of major hostilities,” says Straub. “None of the six countries concerned wants all-out conflict.”

The North “has continued to engage in bloody provocations” since the Korean War, he says, but “it’s hard to imagine what North Korea would have to do to prompt South Korea’s Moon administration to retaliate.” And, “although President Trump used to talk big about what he would do to Pyongyang, it has become evident that it was all bluff and bluster.”

Let’s hope. But it’s those little things—an intrusion here, an accident there—that might upset the carefully wrought equilibrium.

Only weeks ago, the DMZ seemed a symbol of progress toward peace as Trump stepped across into North Korea with his buddy Kim Jong Un. Now we see a North Korean soldier coming the other way through a minefield.

We should make no mistake. We’re at least as close to the razor’s edge of war as to the brink of peace.

Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/after-north-korea-missile-launches-east-asia-is-on-the-razors-edge

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The Mariana Islands in the north-western Pacific, comprising the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam, were once seen as “the tip of the spear” of American power projection in the region — but China’s influence is growing across the area through deep-sea research and what was once the world’s most lucrative casino.

“Wars and conflicts never start on Fifth Avenue, they start in places of limited strategic consequence [such as the Mariana Islands],” said Patrick Gerard Buchan, fellow at the Washington-based think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “That is where great powers rub up against each other.”

The U.S territories— a 15-hour flight from California and just five hours by air from Beijing — are scattered across the Pacific along the western edge of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on the planet.

“It is around these islands that the line of spheres of influence between the [U.S and China] are being drawn,” said Lyle Goldstein, director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College. “The question is where does the line switch.”

“China’s activity and influence in the region has increased significantly,” said Jian Zhang, director of China engagement, UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defense Force Academy. “That will have far-reaching consequences for the region’s politics and security. China has become very interested in the region which used to be called ‘the American lake’ or ‘Australia’s backyard.’ ”

Part of China’s new-found interest is undersea exploration, giving it an exceptional degree of knowledge about an area that has been an important U.S. military outpost since the Second World War.

More than a quarter of Guam is occupied by two U.S military bases, and its residents serve in the military at a rate three times higher than any U.S state. There has been a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense or THAAD anti-ballistic missile system on Guam since 2013 — the same system deployed in South Korea with U.S assistance in 2016, angering China — and the island has been periodically threatened as a target for North Korean nuclear weapons over the last five years.

In October, China’s Tan Suo 1 deep-sea research mission returned from the Mariana Trench, where it successfully operated an unpiloted glider for 46 continuous days at a depth of 7,000 meters — an unprecedented duration, at an unprecedented depth, according to Chinese media.

The Tan Suo scientists also tested the first magnesium seawater fuel cell to operate at 10,000 meters below the sea, and live-streamed video from a robot at that depth. The tests indicate China’s gliders can collect data useful in anti-detection efforts for its submarine fleet and help the People’s Liberation Army Navy or PLAN address one of its biggest challenges — one that is made harder by the multiple island chains surrounding China’s coast.

“This isn’t an obscure issue, it goes to the very heart of China’s nuclear strategy,” said Goldstein, noting China’s military has stated its ambition for the PLAN submarine fleet to operate globally, like the American and Russian fleets do.

Crucial to this strategy is the ability to navigate submarines undetected from the waters between the first island chain — Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines — and out to the second, which includes the Mariana Islands.

“I’ve been working in undersea warfare for 20 years and I’ve never encountered serious thinking about what a military would want to do at 5,000 meters or lower,” Goldstein said, adding that sound travels in such a way at that depth to allow the tracking of other submarines from hundreds of miles away.

“Because China’s military now has become more globally active, they’ll need more supporting bases overseas, and it’s very possible in the future they will have some bases in the Pacific island region,” said Zhang from UNSW Canberra.

Chinese media has also reported plans next year to launch two underwater platforms to take samples on the bottom of the South China Sea and in the Mariana Trench.

“China is running research vessels everywhere,” said Goldstein. “One major impetus is for economic development. On the other hand, there are strong military and strategic reasons to pursue this course. China understands there is a very wide crossover between military and civilian technology when it comes to oceanography.”

Uncertain status quo

Though their strategic value has been at an ebb, the Mariana Islands and to their south, Micronesia, have been treated as military footholds across the Pacific for centuries. Before the second world war, the U.S. and Japan were vying for power across the islands, and which islands fell to which side ended up having an enormous impact on the conflict.

Evan Laksmana, senior researcher at the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Indonesia’s preference was for the U.S. and China to work out their issues to the point that it didn’t raise military tensions in the region. “The status quo has been uncertain for a while,” he said.

Indonesia is also wary of parallels between the relationship the U.S. maintains with its Pacific territories and its own challenges with possible secessionist movements in West Papua. Laksmana noted that the Indonesian military had already begun a plan to rebalance the distribution of its forces towards the eastern part of Indonesia because of these movements.

Meanwhile, experts warn that the opacity of America’s presence in the Pacific is creating a vacuum in which China’s influence has grown.

“China’s goal isn’t to be the new superpower in the region, but they are interested in being the primary influencer of events,” said Robert Underwood, the former congressman from Guam in the U.S. House of Representatives. “The lack of clarity on the part of the U.S. is facilitating this.”

The status quo is not only changing under the sea. Experts have called attention to the fact that China has made significant investments in the infrastructure of the islands, with an increasing amount of construction done by Chinese state-owned firms. Stepping into a vacuum left by lax labor laws and a slowing economy, Chinese-owned companies have become major players in the local business environment.

To jump-start the economy after garment manufacturing moved elsewhere, authorities in 2013 passed a law legalizing casinos. In 2014, Imperial Pacific, owned by Hong Kong billionaire Cui Lijie, won an exclusive contract to build the Best Sunshine hotel and casino complex on Saipan, the largest and most populous island in the CNMI.

Best Sunshine’s 16 VIP tables turned over $3.9 billion a month in 2016, according to a Reuters report, while the world’s biggest casino, the Venetian Macao, managed about $2.5 billion per month on 102 VIP tables at the time. But turnover has dwindled of late, and the recent departure of a series of key executives have left the casino’s future in doubt.

“It is becoming clearer now that there is a strategic bent to a lot of these investments,” said Jonathan Pryke, director of the Pacific Islands program at Australia’s Lowy Institute. “China wants to expand their influence with the end goal of an expanded military presence.”

Australia and the U.S seem to be looking at everything China is doing in the Pacific through a strategic lens, Pryke said.

Unpredictable future

Residents of the CNMI and Guam are U.S citizens by birth, but while they are subject to the whims of Washington they lack many of the benefits afforded to U.S. citizens living in the 50 states — including the right to elect a representative in the Senate.

Saipan is just 3,953km from Beijing but more than 12,500km from Washington. The U.S has applied a similar   pattern of neglect to the Mariana Islands as it has to another territory at the fringe of its empire, Puerto Rico, where the administration of President Donald Trump has been slammed for its lackluster response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Young people in the U.S Pacific territories and neighboring Micronesia are thinking about China as their future economic partner — and the U.S is not doing much to dissuade them, according to former Congressman Underwood. “In the Federated States of Micronesia, they are sending 40 students a year to China for college,” said Underwood, who is also the former president of the University of Guam.

“They learn Mandarin first. If you multiply that figure over 15 years, you have hundreds of people who are a little more open to those relationships than they would be otherwise. There’s no U.S counterbalance to that.”

Buchan from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies is firm on the need for the U.S to pay more attention to the region.

“Complacency is a luxury Washington does not have,” he said, though he notes that U.S.-China competition in the Pacific could have an impact on other contested areas, such as the South China Sea where both sides are trying to assert military dominance. During the cold war, to avoid catastrophic confrontation, little pressure valves were found for competition between the superpowers that relieved the overall tension outside of the main front, to reduce tension through competition.

“Perhaps this competition going on in the Pacific, if managed well, does in fact reduce overall tension [in the U.S.-China relationship], particularly in flashpoint places like the South China Sea.”

Source: http://www.mvariety.com/regional-news/110176-us-china-battle-for-dominance-extends-across-pacific-above-and-below-the-sea

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Last Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang confirmed that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor had been arrested on December 10 and were being investigated for “activities that harm China’s state security.”

Asked whether the detention of Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Spavor, a businessman, was related to, or retaliation for, Canada’s arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Kang neither confirmed nor denied it.

A day earlier, when asked what the connection was between the detention of Kovrig in China and that of Meng in Canada, the same spokesman didn’t directly answer the question either. Instead, he said: “Our attitude on this case is very clear. The Canadian side should correct its mistakes and release Ms Meng Wanzhou immediately.”

On Kovrig, he added, “I have no information to offer.”

But for many observers, including two former Canadian ambassadors to China, their arrests were a direct reaction to Meng’s detention in Vancouver on December 1. Indeed, the timing of their arrests, China’s warnings as well as its other comments and actions make people rightly believe that its detention of the two Canadians is Beijing’s retaliation against Ottawa’s arrest of Meng.

In what was called Beijing’s “tit-for-tat play to put pressure on overseas rivals,” in 2014 China arrested a Canadian couple, Kevin and Julia Garratt, on charges of spying in response to Canada’s arrest of Su Bin, a Chinese businessman charged with stealing US fighter-jet secrets. Garratt himself and others now believe Kovrig’s arrest was retaliation for Meng’s detention.

The 46-year-old CFO was detained at the request of US authorities who accused her of bank fraud related to violating sanctions against trade with Iran. On December 11, she was granted bail of C$10 million (US$7.5 million) while awaiting a decision on whether she will be extradited to the US.

Huawei is seen as the symbol of China’s technological achievements as well as its ambitions to be a global tech powerhouse. As such, for the Chinese, as noted by the state-run Global Times, Meng’s arrest was a political plot by the US to stifle the tech giant and, ultimately, to contain China’s rise.

In an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail on December 13, the Chinese ambassador to Canada, Lu Shaye, also said the tech executive’s detention “is not a mere judicial case, but a premeditated political action in which the United States wields its regime power to witch-hunt a Chinese high-tech company out of political consideration.”

What’s more, he claimed: “The so-called long-arm jurisdiction of the United States … has no legal basis in international law. The reason behind all the bullying behaviors of the United States is that it pursues power politics against other countries relying on its huge advantage in national strength.”

The comments by the Global Times, an influential offspring of the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party of China, and notably by Ambassador Lu, are very telling.

First, from the Chinese perspective, Meng’s arrest was purely a political move by Washington. US President Donald Trump’s reckless comment that he could intervene if doing so would help secure a trade deal with China might have strengthened such a view.

But during the joint press conference at the US-Canada 2+2 Ministerial Meeting of the foreign and defense chiefs of the two countries on Friday, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland robustly rejected such a view. “Canada is a rule-of -law country,” which believes “in honoring our international treaty commitments and in respecting the rule of law and due process in our own country,” she said.

“In the case of Ms Meng, due process and rule of law in Canada has been scrupulously followed. There has been no political interference in this process.”

If Chinese officials and media truly believe the Trump administration is carrying out a political plot aimed at Huawei and their country in general, their government should also retaliate against the US. Yet its response – both in words and actions – to the US since Meng’s arrest has been much weaker than its reprisal against Canada.

For instance, on December 8 and 9, Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Le Yucheng separately summoned Canadian Ambassador John McCallum and US Ambassador Terry Branstad to protest against Meng’s detention. But the language he used when meeting these two envoys was remarkably different.

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, when facing McCallum, the Chinese official said Canada’s detention of Meng “at the behest” of the US not just “severely violates the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese citizen” but also “ignores the law and is unreasonable, unconscionable, and extremely vile in nature.”

By contrast, he only told the American ambassador that what his country “has done severely violates Chinese citizen’s legitimate rights and interests, and is vile in nature.”

His warnings to the two envoys were also very dissimilar. To the Canadian representative, he said China “strongly urges [Canada] to immediately release [Meng] and effectively protect [her] legitimate rights and interests. Otherwise, it will definitely have grave consequences, and the Canadian side will have to bear the full responsibility for it.”

To the US ambassador, Le said his country “strongly urges the US side to attach great importance to [China’s] solemn stance … take immediate measures to correct the wrong actions, and withdraw the arrest warrant against the Chinese citizen. The Chinese side will respond further according to the US side’s actions.”

True to its words, at least in this case, China has now officially detained two Canadian nationals while it hasn’t made a similar move against any Americans.

In fact, since Meng’s detention, which took place on the same day that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Buenos Aires, Beijing has primarily focused its ire on Ottawa while uncharacteristically avoiding a blow-up with Washington.

At that much-talked-about confab in the Argentine capital on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty summit, the two leaders struck a 90-day trade truce and agreed to work toward a permanent deal within that period.

As some rightly noted, Beijing is in a weaker position and is desperate to end the trade war. Thus it doesn’t want to alienate the Trump White House further.

By contrast, the world’s most populous country and second-biggest economy is much stronger than Canada. That’s why, to borrow the words of the Chinese ambassador to Canada, the Asian giant is willing to “pursue power politics against [the North American country] relying on its huge advantage in national strength.”

Arguably, as has been pointedly observed, it’s not the first time China has been willing to use its new found power to bully a weaker side. Last year, when the US installed its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea, China used its economic leverage to retaliate against South Korea, not against the US.

What Beijing did then to South Korea, and now is doing to Canada, is completely different from what its “core” leader, Xi Jinping, has constantly and publicly preached on the world stage. In many international homilies, including his keynote speech at the United Nations Office in Geneva in early 2017, Xi denounces “power politics” and urges “big countries” to “treat smaller ones as equals instead of acting as a hegemon imposing their will on others.” He also pledges that “no matter how strong its economy grows, China will never seek hegemony.”

With its publicly professed “America first” doctrine, it isn’t surprising that Trump’s America “pursues power politics against other countries.”

But for all Xi’s nice rhetoric, which even sounds as if he puts not his country but mankind first, China doesn’t behave better. In fact, in some cases, it behaves worse than the US. Beijing’s retaliation against Canada is further clear evidence that China’s claims of benign diplomacy appear to counter its actions.

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SouthKorea’s prime minister, Lee Nak-yon, suggested that Kim Jong Un, the North’s leader, could order a launch on Saturday, the 64th anniversary of the totalitarian regime’s founding.

“There is speculation that there could be an additional provocation of firing an ICBM at a normal angle on [Sept.] 9,” Lee said.

If this proves true, Lee’s reference to the “normal angle” could dictate what happens next.

During North Korea’s first successful ICBM test in May, it fired the rocket at a “lofted” angle, which meant it traveled to an immense altitude but descended a relatively short distance away.

When it tested its second ICBM last month, however, it launched the missile in a way much more consistent with an actual attack, lower and farther so it flew over Japan.

This type of “normal” trajectory could take a missile close to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. There was no suggestion that Guam was the target for Saturday’s speculated launch, but North Korea has threatened to test-fire missiles toward the island before, and such a move would be seen as a serious escalation.

“It is time to step up sanctions and secure sufficient military means to deter them in order to stop North Korea’s nuclear armament,” Lee said. “We ultimately need talks with North Korea, but it is not the time right now to speak of a dialogue with North Korea.”

Most experts agree the Kim government isn’t likely to attempt an unprovoked attack. Rather, North Korea says it wants a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the U.S. as a deterrent against attack.

Tensions have risen between the isolated, secretive dictatorship and the outside world since its sixth nuclear test Sunday and a flurry of outspoken statements between Kim and President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson responded to a shouted question about a U.S. response to North Korea’s nuclear weapons testing, saying, “There will be one.”

On Thursday, China, which is North Korea’s main trading partner, said it agreed that the United Nations Security Council should take further actions against its neighbor while continuing to push for more dialogue, according to Reuters.

And Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke at a regional meeting in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok and agreed to try to persuade China and Russia to cut off oil to North Korea as much as possible, South Korean officials told the news agency.

North Korea has said in public statements that it wants an official end to the Korean War. The conflict was halted by a 1953 armistice, but no peace treaty has been signed. It also wants nothing short of full normalization of relations with the U.S. and to be treated with respect and as an equal in the global arena.

Meanwhile, the four remaining launchers of a U.S. missile defense system were deployed in the South Korea.

China is unhappy about the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, because it believes the system’s radar could look deep into its territory.

Many South Koreans who live in Soseong-ri, the small melon-farming community where the system is being deployed, are also angry.

Residents there have been disrupted by the military trucks, buses and helicopters that have been traveling through the area, according to The Associated Press.

On Thursday, some 8,000 riot police officers gathered there to remove around 300 protesters who created a blockade near the former golf course where the system is being deployed.

At least 38 people were injured, local officials told the AP.

Stella Kim reported from Seoul. Alexander Smith reported from London.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-may-fire-another-icbm-weekend-south-warns-n799426

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