U.S. issues warning to N. Korea
‘Full range of capabilities’ to be used in countering Pyongyang missile gains
SEOUL, South Korea — The Trump administration on Tuesday confirmed North Korea’s claim that it had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, but it told Pyongyang that the United States would use “the full range of capabilities at our disposal against the growing threat.”
The administration followed up that warning with a joint military exercise in which U.S. and South Korean forces fired missiles in the waters along the peninsula’s east coast as a show of power.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, said the North’s missile launch earlier in the day was a milestone in its efforts to build nuclear weapons capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.
On Wednesday morning, he taunted the U.S., saying the launch was a Fourth of July “gift” to the Trump administration.
“We should send them gifts once in a while to help break their boredom,” he said, according to the North Korean state-run news agency. On Twitter early Wednesday, the North Korean government belittled the joint exercise as “demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science.”
The North Korean missile departed the Banghyon airfield in the northwestern town of Kusong and flew 578 miles before landing in the sea between North Korea and Japan, the South Korean military said in a statement. The U.S. military said it remained aloft
for 37 minutes.
The Japanese government said the missile landed in its so-called exclusive economic zone off its western coast. Under a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions, North Korea is prohibited from developing or testing ballistic missiles.
While the North has made significant progress in its weapons programs, experts believe it cannot make nuclear warheads small enough to be mounted on ICBMs. Still, U.S. policymakers have long seen just the development of an ICBM as a critical threshold the North should not be allowed to cross.
The missile test adds a volatile new element to the Trump administration’s efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, which have included naval drills off the Korean Peninsula and pressure on China, Pyongyang’s longtime ally. In a blunt call Sunday, President Donald Trump warned President Xi Jinping of China that the United States was prepared to act alone against North Korea.
If the missile took 37 minutes to fly 578 miles, that would mean that it had a highly lofted trajectory, probably reaching an altitude of more than 1,700 miles, said David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Such a missile would have a maximum range of roughly 4,160 miles on a standard trajectory, he said. North Korea said the missile, which it identified as the Hwasong-14, flew for 39 minutes.
“That range would not be enough to reach the lower 48 states or the large islands of Hawaii, but would allow it to reach all of Alaska,” Wright wrote in a blog post.
But analysts also cautioned that although they had been impressed by the rapid and steady progress in the North’s missile programs, the long flight time itself did not suggest that North Korea had mastered the complex technologies needed to build a reliable nuclear-tipped ICBM, like the know-how to separate the nuclear warhead and guide it to its target.
Pushing China to act
Before the announcement, Trump had noted the missile launch on Twitter, suggesting that it was time for China to act decisively against the North and “end this nonsense once and for all.” On Tuesday, Chinese officials criticized the missile test, saying it violated U.N. rules.
But at the same time, the Chinese government offered no signs that it was preparing to take more drastic action against the North, urging a return to diplomatic talks instead.
“I have to reiterate that the current situation in the Korean Peninsula is complicated and sensitive,” Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said at a regular news conference in Beijing. “We hope all sides concerned can remain calm and restrained so that tensions can be eased as soon as possible.”
Later in Moscow, where Xi was visiting, President Vladimir Putin of Russia said both had agreed to advance a joint proposal to settle the Korea crisis by freezing the North’s nuclear and missile programs and the joint military drills by the U.S. and South Korea. In remarks broadcast on Russian television, Putin called a solution proposed with China “a joint foreign-policy priority.”
Calls for diplomacy
Russia, which like China borders North Korea, has repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that the launch would give “more arguments to those who seek pretexts for new escalation of tensions,” according to the Interfax news agency.
The U.S. Mission to the United Nations requested an emergency meeting of the 15-member Security Council, which has penalized North Korea multiple times over its repeated violations of a ban on nuclear and missile testing. Diplomats said the emergency meeting would likely be held Wednesday.
The U.N. secretary-general, António Guterres, sharply criticized the North Korean launch.
“This action is yet another brazen violation of Security Council resolutions and constitutes a dangerous escalation of the situation,” he said in a statement. Guterres called on North Korea to “cease further provocative actions and comply fully with its international obligations.”
Trump is to meet this week with both Putin and Xi at the Group of 20 meeting in Germany, and Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said the missile test would force them to find some kind of common ground on North Korea. He did not specify what that might be, but he suggested that it would now be more difficult for Xi to stand by Pyongyang.
“Certainly the test will change the game,” Cheng said. “The business-as-usual situation is over.”
Other analysts said the launch would put Trump’s administration in a precarious position, given that it had indicated that such a missile, capable of reaching parts of the U.S., was a critical threshold.
In January, Trump declared on Twitter “it won’t happen!”; the message set off a cascade of speculation on what exactly he meant.