Alert for lethal military action, US casts wary a eye on North Korea

Officials see Kim taking harder, aggressive line By Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes

WASHINGTON — North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after having shifted to a policy of open hostility, US officials say.

The officials have assessed that Kim’s recent harder line is part of a pattern of provocations, but that his declarations have been more aggressive than previous statements and should be taken seriously.

While the officials added that they did not see an imminent risk of a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula, Kim could carry out strikes in a way that he thinks would avoid rapid escalation.

They pointed to North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island in 2010 as an example. The two sides exchanged artillery fire, resulting in the reported deaths of troops on both sides as well as civilians in the South, but both militaries soon stopped.

Jonathan Finer, the White House deputy national security adviser, said at an Asia Society forum in Washington on Thursday that North Korea had “chosen to continue going down a very negative path.”

Kim’s more aggressive posture has been evident through a series of actions this month. On Wednesday, the North fired several cruise missiles from its west coast into the sea, the South Korean military said. Kim’s government announced Jan. 14 that it had tested a new solid-fuel intermediate-range missile tipped with a hypersonic warhead. And on Jan. 5, his military fired hundreds of artillery shells into waters near South Korean islands, forcing residents to seek shelter.

At the same time, Kim has decided to formally abandon a longtime official goal of peaceful reunification with South Korea, the North Korean state news media announced Jan. 16. Kim had signaled the move for months and said in a speech the day before that conciliatory references to unity with the Republic of Korea, as the South is officially known, must be removed from the constitution.

“We can specify in our constitution the issue of completely occupying, subjugating, and reclaiming the ROK and annexing it as a part of the territory of our republic in case a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim said.

He has repeatedly denounced the three-way security pact announced in August by President Biden, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan.

The confluence of Kim’s policy shift and the projectile firings has caught the attention of US officials who monitor North Korea, which has a nuclear weapons program and is under harsh United Nations sanctions. Kim’s moves also appear to be shutting the door, for now, on any chance of diplomacy with the United States, which he has shunned since his face-to-face talks with President Donald Trump failed in 2019.

And US officials say the North Korean leader is likely feeling emboldened because of his growing partnership with Russia.