Nuclear threat escalates in Korea
Trump team to brief Senate Wednesday
WASHINGTON • North Korea conducted live-fire artillery drills and a U.S. guided-missile submarine arrived in South Korea on Tuesday, as the Trump administration prepared an extraordinary White House briefing for senators on the escalating nuclear threat.
Fears North Korea could mark the 85th anniversary of its military’s founding with a nuclear test explosion or a ballistic missile launch proved unfounded. But the unpredictable communist nation rattled its sabre all the same, with drills that served as a reminder of the threat it poses below the border to U.S.-allied South Korea.
The exercise in the area of the east coast city of Wonsan involved 300 to 400 artillery pieces, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said. An official from Seoul’s Defence Ministry couldn’t confirm such details. Seoul lies only 40 kilometres from the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, well within artillery range.
President Donald Trump has sent more U.S. military assets to the region in a show of force while leaning on China to exert economic pressure on its wayward ally. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who spoke to Trump on Monday, is urging restraint from both Pyongyang and Washington.
The USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, arrived Tuesday at the South Korean port of Busan for what was described as a routine visit to rest crew and load supplies.
The U.S. 7th Fleet said two American destroyers were also conducting simultaneous maritime exercises with naval ships from South Korea and Japan. And the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier is headed for the Korean Peninsula and a joint exercise with South Korea.
In Washington, top Trump administration officials are due to brief the entire U.S. Senate on Wednesday. A rapid tempo of North Korean weapons testing in the past year has pushed Kim Jong Un’s authoritarian nation closer to developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the U.S. mainland.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham voiced confidence Tuesday that Trump won’t allow North Korea to reach that point. Graham, a defence hawk who dined with Trump on Monday night, said the North should not underestimate the president’s resolve.
“We are probably in one of the most challenging situations since the Cuban missile crisis,” Sen. John McCain, another Republican who joined Trump for the dinner, told a congressional hearing Tuesday, referring to the 1962 standoff with the Soviet Union that pushed the superpowers close to nuclear confrontation. McCain said a North Korean nuclear missile capable of striking an American city was “an imminent danger.”
McCain said Trump is “exploring all options” on North Korea.