NKOREA TO LAUNCH 4 MISSILES AT GUAM
North Korea on Thursday announced a detailed plan to launch four ballistic missiles toward the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, a major military hub and home to U.S. bombers, and dismissed President Donald Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” if it doesn’t back down.
The announcement said the Korean People’s Army Strategic Force will finalize the plan by mid-August, or within a week or so, present it to Kim Jong Un and “wait for his order.”
“We keep closely watching the speech and behavior of the U.S.,” it said.
It said the North is preparing a plan to fire four of its Hwasong-12 missiles over Japan and into waters around the tiny island, which hosts 7,000 U.S. military personnel on two main bases and has a population of 160,000.
The Hwasong-12 rockets would fly over Shimane, Hiroshima and Koichi prefectures in Japan and travel “1,065 seconds before hitting the waters 30 to 40 kilometers away from Guam.”
It is unclear whether North Korea would risk firing missiles so close to U.S. territory, which could provoke countermeasures and further escalation.
North Korea frequently uses extremely bellicose rhetoric with warnings of military action to keep its adversaries on their heels.
But the statement raised worries amid a barrage of threats from both sides.
Following reports that U.S. intelligence suggests the North might be able to pair a nuclear warhead with a missile capable of reaching targets on the United States mainland, Trump warned North Korea that “it faces retaliation with fire and fury unlike any the world has seen before.”
Pyongyang, meanwhile, has been louder in its complaints against a new and tough round of sanctions imposed on it by the United Nations, with strong U.S. backing, and Washington’s use of Guam as a staging ground for its stealth bombers, which could be used to attack North Korea and are a particularly sore point with the rulers in Pyongyang.
Guam lies about 3,400 kilometers from the Korean Peninsula, and it’s extremely unlikely Kim’s government would risk annihilation with a pre-emptive attack on U.S. citizens.
It’s also unclear how reliable North Korea’s missiles would be against such a distant target, but no one was writing off the danger completely.
Japan says it could shoot down missiles for its U.S. ally if North Korea fires them at Guam.
Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told Thursday’s parliamentary session that a missile attack on the U.S. territory would breach the U.S. deterrence against an attack on Japan. He said that would be a Japanese national emergency because it would threaten Japan’s existence as a nation.
He said Japan in that case can exercise the right to “collective” self-defense and activate the Aegis destroyer ship-to-air missile defense system.
Onodera’s comment underscores Japan’s growing military role and reverses its previous position that it can only shoot down missiles headed to Japan.