North Korea boosts its defences

SEOUL/BEIJING: North Korea has strengthened defences on its east coast, a South Korean lawmaker said yesterday, after the North said US President Donald Trump had declared war and that it would shoot down US bombers flying near the peninsula.

Tensions have escalated since North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3, but the rhetoric has reached a new level in recent days with leaders on both sides exchanging threats and insults.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho said Trump’s Twitter comments, in which the US leader said Ri and leader Kim Jong-un “won’t be around much longer” if they acted on their threats, amounted to a declaration of war and that Pyongyang had the right to take counter-measures.

South Korean lawmaker Lee Cheol-uoo, briefed by the country’s spy agency, said the reclusive North was in fact bolstering its defences by moving aircraft to its east coast and taking other measures after US bombers flew close to the peninsula at the weekend.

Lee said the US appeared to have disclosed the flight route of the bombers intentionally because North Korea seemed to be unaware.

Ri, the foreign minister, said on Monday the North’s right to countermeasures included shooting down US bombers “even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country”.

“The whole world should clearly remember it was the US who first declared war on our country,” he said in New York on Monday, where he had been attending the annual UN General Assembly.

“The question of who won’t be around much longer will be answered then,” he said.

White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders denied on Monday that the US had declared war, calling the suggestion “absurd”.

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said war on the Korean peninsula would have no winner.

“We hope the US and North Korean politicians have sufficient political judgment to realise that resorting to military force will never be a viable way to resolve the peninsula issue and their own concerns,” Lu said.

“We also hope that both sides can realise that being bent on assertiveness and provoking each other will only increase the risk of conflict and reduce room for policy manoeuvres. War on the peninsula will have no winner.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking on the sidelines of a UN meeting, said the situation on the peninsula was at a very dangerous stage, the foreign ministry said yesterday.

The urgent task was to prevent North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes progressing, to avoid a further escalation in tensions and to especially prevent resorting to arms, Wang added.

China had repeatedly called for dialogue to resolve the issue and has also signed up for increasingly tough UN sanctions against North Korea. Reuters