North Korean roulette
Globe on edge as leaders put military on high alert
THE world is bracing for the next step from a tough-talking North Korea, which has threatened to unleash nuclear weapons against the United States and allies like Australia as soon as this weekend.
Experts fear dictator Kim Jong-un will test his seventh nuclear weapon as part of annual military pageantry when the hermit nation celebrates the birthday of its founder.
Commemorations of the 105th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth began yesterday morning with a military parade featuring thousands of soldiers in synchronised marching in the capital Pyongyang.
Pyongyang escalated its anti-West fervour after US President Donald Trump ordered a retaliatory Tomahawk strike on its ally Syria after government forces there murdered at least 80 civilians in a horrific chemical attack.
The Syria strike and an attack on Thursday on an ISIS cave network in eastern Afghanistan with the biggest ever non-nuclear bomb – the ninetonne Massive Ordnance Air Blast (or MOAB) – raised international tensions to historic heights.
Mr Trump’s new-found appetite for international intervention spread to another continent yesterday, as US troops were deployed to fight Islamic terrorists in Somalia for the first time since 1996.
Dozens of soldiers were sent to fight some 9000 members of Al-Qaeda offshoot al-Shabab, which is stacked with foreign fighters and has murdered hundreds in attacks in Somalia and neighbouring Kenya in recent years.
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol said his nation would launch a preemptive nuclear strike if the US appeared ready to act.
Experts do not believe North Korea can currently fire a nuclear weapon, but there are concerns it could launch a warhead to mainland USA and Australia within a few years.
“We will go to war if they choose,” Mr Han said.
A joint US and Japanese navy strike force is in the western Pacific near the Korean Peninsula and Japan was yesterday preparing evacuation plans for its citizens in South Korea, which would be the first to suffer casualties should the North strike.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said there were 60,000 civilians in South Korea.
Mr Trump’s new triggerhappy stance has been welcomed by some quarters in the US. US officials yesterday said the administration had decided on a strategy of “maximum pressure and engagement” to deal with North Korea.