Allies send North missile warning
seoul — South Korea and the United States fired off missiles on Wednesday simulating a precision strike against North Korea’s leadership, in response to a landmark ICBM test described by Kim JongUn as a gift to ‘Americans’.
Tuesday’s launch — acknowledged as an ICBM by Washington — marked a milestone in Pyongyang’s decades-long drive for the capability to threaten the US mainland with a nuclear strike, and poses a stark foreign policy challenge for Donald Trump.
The US president had vowed that “won’t happen”, but independent experts said it could reach Alaska or even further towards the continental US.
It will require a reassessment of the threat posed by the nucleararmed North, which has carried out five atomic tests and said the multi-stage rocket’s warhead could survive atmospheric re-entry to strike a target.
Amid international condemnation of the test, South Korean and US military forces launched shortrange ballistic missiles of their own less than 24 hours afterwards from the peninsula into the Sea of Japan.
Both weapons homed in on their target, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “displaying the capabil-
Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40 per cent in the first quarter. so much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!” Donald Trump, US president
ity of a precision strike against the enemy headquarters in times of emergency”.
The South’s new President Moon Jae-In, who backs engagement with Pyongyang to bring it to the negotiating table, said the North’s “serious provocation required us to react
denuclearisation of the entire Korean peninsula cannot and should not be used as a disguise for attempts to change N. Korea’s regime. This is our common position
Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister
with more than just a statement”.
US general Vincent Brooks, the Combined Forces commander in South Korea, said: “Self restraint, which is a choice, is all that separates armistice and war.
“As this alliance missile live fire shows, we are able to change our
americans … would be not very happy with this gift sent on the July 4 anniversary. We should send them gifts once in a while to help break their boredom Kim Jong-Un, North Korea’s leader
choice when so ordered by our alliance national leaders.”
The two countries are in a security alliance, with 28,500 US troops stationed in the South to protect it. Their language is likely to infuriate Pyongyang, which says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against the threat of invasion and has been subjected to multiple sets of UN sanctions over its atomic and missile programmes. The launches came hours after a joint appeal by the presidents of China and Russia for all sides to exercise restraint and ease tensions. —