North Korea launched an ICBM, U.S. says
UN Security Council to discuss what Tillerson describes as ‘global threat’
WASHINGTON— The United States asserted Tuesday that North Korea’s latest missile launch was indeed an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), as the North had boasted and the U.S. and South Korea had feared. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called it a “new escalation of the threat” to the U.S.
In a show of force directly responding to North Korea’s provocation, U.S. and South Korean soldiers fired “deep strike” precision missiles into South Korean territorial waters on Tuesday, U.S. military officials in Seoul said. The missile firings demonstrated U.S.-South Korean solidarity, the U.S. Eighth Army said in a statement.
At the request of the U.S., Japan and South Korea, the United Nations Security Council was to hold an emergency session on Wednesday afternoon. Tillerson said that was part of a U.S. response that would include “stronger measures to hold the DPRK accountable,” using an acronym for the isolated nation’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“Global action is required to stop a global threat,” Tillerson said. “Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime.”
He said the U.S. “will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.”
Tillerson’s statement, issued Tuesday evening as most Americans were celebrating the Fourth of July holiday, notably did not mention China, whose help the Trump administration has been aggressively seeking to press Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program. In recent days, as the North has continued to test missiles in defiance of global pressure, U.S. President Donald Trump has started voicing doubt that Beijing is up to the task. His administration has taken a number of steps against China’s interests that have suggested its patience has run short.
Tillerson’s comments were the first public confirmation by the U.S. that the missile was indeed an ICBM, constituting a major technological advancement for the North and its most successful missile test yet.
The prime danger from the U.S. viewpoint is the prospect of North Korea pairing a nuclear warhead with an ICBM. The latest U.S. intelligence assessment is that the North probably does not yet have that capability — putting a smallenough nuclear warhead atop an ICBM.
Initial U.S. military assessments had been that it was an intermediate-range missile. NORAD, or the North American Aerospace Defence Command, said the missile did not pose a threat to North America.
Trump, in his initial response to the launch on Monday evening, urged China on Twitter to “put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!” But he also said it was “hard to believe” that South Korea and Japan, the two U.S. treaty allies most at risk from North Korea, would “put up with this much longer.”