N. Korea missile’s reach fuels South, U.S. concerns over arms
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea announced Saturday that it soon will start talks with the Trump administration about allowing Seoul to build more powerful ballistic missiles to counter the North, but current and former U.S. officials said the move would have little effect on the most urgent problem facing Washington: North Korea’s apparent ability to strike California and beyond.
The South’s president, Moon Jae-in, called for the relaxation of limits on its missile arsenal hours after the North launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, 2,200 miles into space. Experts quickly calculated that the demonstrated range of that test shot, if flattened out over the Pacific, could easily reach Los Angeles and perhaps as far as Chicago and New York, though its accuracy is in doubt.
The new missiles that South Korea wants, in addition to being able to strike deep into the North, could be a way of pressuring China to restrain Pyongyang because the missiles would likely be able to hit Chinese territory as well.
U.S. Gen. H.R. McMaster agreed to a proposal early Saturday by Moon’s top national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, to propose immediately start negotiations with South Korea.
South Korea needs approval from the U.S. to build more powerful missiles under the terms of a bilateral treaty.
There are still questions over whether the North can shrink a nuclear weapon to fit atop its intercontinental missiles, or keep it from burning up on reentry into the atmosphere.
But at the Pentagon and inside U.S. intelligence agencies, attention centered on North Korea’s demonstration that it had the ability to threaten death in the U.S. if the regime of Kim Jong Un was prodded.
“U.S. policy for 21 years has been to prevent this day from coming, and now it has,” said Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, referring to the North’s ICBM test on Friday.