National Post (National Edition)
North Korea threatens to attack U.S. bases
Bomber training flights infuriate Pyongyang
SEOUL
North Korea threatened Thursday to attack U.S. military bases in Japan and the Pacific island of Guam in retaliation for training missions by U.S. B-52 bombers over the Korean peninsula, while state radio blared airraid warnings to the North Korean people.
Until the 1990s, air-raid drills had been a popular tool for the Pyongyang regime to highlight the perceived threat of a U.S. invasion and to instill in its people a sense of crisis and solidarity.
Thursday’s one-hour airraid drill came amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula after the North’s nuclear test on Feb. 12 and the subsequent UN sanctions against Pyongyang.
Nuclear-capable B-52 bombers, taking off from Guam, had previously flown missions over South Korea as part of joint military exercises. But this month, the Pentagon took the rare action of publicly announcing those missions to reaffirm the U.S.’s “nuclear umbrella” for South Korea and Japan at a time of rising anxiety over the North’s nuclear threats.
South Korean news media also carried photos of a U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarine calling at a South Korean naval base.
“The U.S. should not forget that the Anderson Air Force Base on Guam, where B-52s take off, and naval bases in Japan proper and Okinawa, where nuclear-powered submarines are launched, are within the striking range of the [North Korea’s] precision strike means,” a spokesman of the Supreme Command of the North Korean People’s Army told the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
“Now that the U.S. started open nuclear blackmail and threat, the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], too, will move to take corresponding military actions.”
Japan and U.S. Pacific bases are within range of North Korea’s medium-range missiles, according to South Korean defence officials.
One of the two joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises that have infuriated North Korea ended Thursday. But Seoul and Washington remained alert over the possibility Pyongyang might follow up on some of its vaguely worded threats to attack the allies.
Such fears increased Wednesday, when a hacking attack originating from an Internet address in China caused a widespread shutdown, paralyzing about 32,000 computers at South Korea’s two largest public broadcasters, an all-news cable channel and three banks.
The South’s Korea Communications Commission said Thursday that a “single organization” was behind the spread of the malicious code. The virus infiltrated the networks through company servers that send automatic updates of security and other software.
While South Korean regulators said it was still too early to assign blame, suspicion fell on North Korea, which recently threatened Seoul and Washington with attacks. South Korea has previously accused North Korean hackers of using Chinese addresses to launch their attacks.