Diplomatic gains at risk, N. Korea says

U.S. fighters at South’s military drills, submarine visit called ‘hostile acts’

GENEVA — A North Korean diplomat said Tuesday that the United States and South Korea were “inciting military tension” by proceeding with joint military exercises this week, saying they would jeopardize the diplomatic efforts to reach a deal on the North’s nuclear weapons.

The statement from the diplomat, Ju Yong Chol, at the United Nations-backed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, came hours after North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles, the latest in a series of tests it has carried out since late July.

Ju said the deployment of F-35A stealth fighters and high-altitude reconnaissance drones for the military exercises, along with a port call by the U.S. nuclear submarine Oklahoma City, were “hostile acts.” He said they showed that Washington and Seoul still regarded North Korea as an enemy, despite the commitment made last year by President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, the North’s leader, to forge a new relationship between their countries.

As a result, “we are also compelled to develop, test and deploy the powerful physical means essential for our national defense,” Ju told the conference, a multilateral forum for negotiating arms control and nonproliferation agreements.

Ju’s statement made no reference to the missile launch carried out earlier Tuesday by North Korea, nor to three similar missile tests it has conducted in recent weeks. The tests appear to violate U.N. resolutions that bar the country from developing or testing ballistic missiles.

South Korean military officials said the North fired two missiles Tuesday morning that flew 280 miles before landing in the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. From their trajectory and flight characteristics, they looked similar to two missiles fired by North Korea on July 25, the officials said.

North Korea said today that Kim attended the test a day earlier, saying that the two missiles flew across the sky over the Pyongyang metropolitan area and hit a targeted islet off its east coast.

Kim said the test Tuesday “would be an occasion to send an adequate warning to the joint military drill now underway by the U.S. and South Korean authorities,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea has long objected to the joint exercises regularly carried out by South Korea and the United States, calling them rehearsals for invasion. The drills are expected to formally begin later this week, but some preparatory exercises have already been held, according to South Korean officials.

Ju said the joint exercises were “dramatically reducing our desire” for implementing agreements with the United States and would affect prospects for further talks. He said they were an “open denial and flagrant violation” of the agreements made by Trump and Kim.

He also said they would lead the North to “reconsider the major steps we have taken,” presumably a reference to its nuclear program. North Korea has not carried out nuclear or long-range missile tests since late 2017, around the same time it began a diplomatic outreach to South Korea and the U.S.

Trump ordered a scaling-down of joint exercises with South Korea after his first meeting with Kim, but the statement they signed makes no mention of the joint drills. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said North Korea had not reciprocated with similar adjustments to its own military training.