North Korea war ‘real possibility’ – think tank

A WAR with North Korea is now a “real possibility”, and hundreds of thousands of people are likely to be killed or injured, a respected defence think-tank has warned.

In a disturbing assessment of the crisis sparked by Pyongyang’s intensified nuclear missile testing, the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) said combat would “not be surgical or short”.

War could be triggered by either North Korea or the US, but there is a growing risk that Donald Trump will decide to “resolve” the issue “sooner rather than later”, according to its report.

The UK would have only a few hours at most to decide how to respond, it adds.

“War is now a real possibility,” the report states.

Pyongyang accused the US of declaring war after Mr Trump tweeted that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “won’t be around much longer”.

The White House dismissed the claim, but Mr Trump has insisted that if the US was forced to defend itself “we will have no choice but to totally destroy” the country.

In the Rusi report, written by its deputy director general Malcolm Chalmers a number of ways a war could be started are set out, including a pre-emptive strike by Pyongyang.

Washington could be provoked into an assault if North Korean test missiles were fired into the ocean near California or Guam, an American territory, it said.

An outbreak of war would be likely to involve a US-led air and cyber offensive, followed by retaliation by Pyongyang against South Korea where around 8,000 Britons live.