WHAT SHOULD THE WEST DO?
Sanctions? Assassination? Or the unthinkable? Unrivalled expert analysis of the North Korea crisis
‘All options are on the table’
A DEFIANT North Korea said it would not ‘flinch an inch’ yesterday despite worldwide condemnation of its unprecedented missile launch over Japan.
After Kim Jong-un’s regime fired the rocket designed to carry a nuclear payload, Donald Trump declared: ‘We’ve heard North Korea’s message loud and clear.’
The ballistic missile – launched on Monday night British time – flew over Japan’s northernmost main island, Hokkaido, before breaking up and crashing into the ocean.
Communities under the flight path awoke to messages at about 6am local time telling them to shelter underground while warning sirens blared. As shockwaves rippled across the region:
South Korea threatened to ‘exterminate’ the despot as it bombed the North’s border in a show of ‘overwhelming force’;
Theresa May flew into Japan after refusing to cancel a planned trade trip;
The Prime Minister ‘strongly condemned’ the missile and said she would talk to Japanese PM Shinzo Abe about how best to deal with Kim;
Stock markets dropped across Europe as traders fretted over the possibility of war.
Just hours after the missile launch, South Korea’s air force staged a live-fire drill simulating the destruction of North Korea’s leadership. Seoul announced that four F-15K fighter jets had dropped eight MK 84 bombs on a simulated target near the border.
South Korean colonel Lee Kuk-No said: ‘If North Korea threatens the security of the South Korean people and the South Korea-US alliance with their nuclear weapons and missiles, our air forces will exterminate the leadership of North Korea with our strong strike capabilities.’
Meanwhile, the US President said: ‘The world has received North Korea’s latest message loud and clear: This regime has signalled its contempt for its neighbours, for all members of the United Nations, and for minimum standards of acceptable international behaviour.
‘Threatening and destabilising actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world. All options are on the table.’
But Pyongyang warned that the US was pushing the region to an ‘extreme level of explosion’ and said it would not stop building up its nuclear arsenal.
North Korea fired the intermediate-range ballistic missile from close to capital Pyongyang.
It flew 1,678 miles, passing over Japan at a height of 341 miles, before breaking into three pieces and plunging into the Pacific.
The missile, which appeared to be North Korea’s furthest- ever test, was the first projectile from the rogue state to pass over Japanese territory since 2009.
Analysis was under way to determine whether its launch had been a success, US officials said. They said it appeared to have been a Hwa- song-12 missile, but others suggested it may have been a KN-17.
Pyongyang has antagonised the West over recent weeks with multiple missile launches – but yesterday’s flight path represents a significant escalation.
The test flight over the territory of a US ally sent a clear message of defiance as Washington and Seoul conduct war games nearby, along with a handful of British troops.
In a 40-minute conversation with Mr Trump, Mr Abe denounced the launch as an ‘ unprecedented threat’ to Japan’s security. He said: ‘We will do our utmost to protect people’s lives.
‘This reckless act of launching a missile that flies over our country is an unprecedented, serious and important threat.’
China urged restraint in the nuclear stand- off on the Korean Peninsula and an end to a ‘malicious cycle’ of escalating tension.
UN sanctions were brought in this month on exports, in a move estimated to cost North Korea $1billion (£775million) a year.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said increased military pressure from the US and South Korea had prompted a response from Pyongyang. She said: ‘Time has proven that pressure and sanctions cannot solve the root of the problem.’
Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said further sanctions would not work as that route ‘has been exhausted’.
North Korea’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva said his country would not ‘flinch an inch’ on the road to building a nuclear force as long as ‘US hostile policies and nuclear threats continue’.
Han Tae-Song told the conference on disarmament yesterday: ‘Now that the US has openly declared its hostile intention towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, by waging aggressive joint military exercises despite repeated warnings… my country has every reason to respond with tough countermeasures as an exercise of its right to self-defence.
‘And the US should be wholly responsible for the catastrophic consequences it will entail.’
He repeated North Korean criticism of the military exercises, which he called ‘a fanatic act of adding fuel to flame’.
It follows a month of escalating hostility between the rogue state and the US, with Donald Trump promising ‘fire and fury like the world has never seen’ if North Korea continued to test missiles.
US intelligence agencies said they believed Pyongyang was capable of producing a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile – a key step towards becoming a fully fledged nuclear power.