U.S. sends sharp message with flyby over DMZ
SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. warplanes flew close to North Korea’s coast Saturday, the same day that the North’s foreign minister told the U.N. General Assembly that President Donald Trump’s threats against the country were “making our rocket’s visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more.”
In response to what it called the North Korean government’s “reckless behavior,” the Pentagon said the Air Force had sent B-1B bombers and F-15C fighters over waters north of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. It was the farthest north “any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea’s coast in the 21st century,” Dana W. White, the Defense Department’s chief spokeswoman, said in a statement.
“This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat,” White added.
Although B-1B bombers have flown near the Demilitarized Zone over land several times, this flight seemed intended to underscore U.S. military strength to the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, who has been engaged in a war of words with Trump.
At the General Assembly on Saturday, Kim’s foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said that North Korea intended to have a “nuclear hammer of justice” against its rivals and boasted that it was “a few steps away” from becoming a nuclear power.
Referring to Trump’s threat — in his General Assembly address on Tuesday — to “totally destroy” North Korea, Ri said the U.S. president had “committed an irreversible mistake.”
But Ri also said the North’s nuclear program was a deterrent intended to avert an invasion, with the ultimate goal being “balance of power with the U.S.”
“We do not have any intention at all to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against the countries that do not join in the U.S. military actions against” North Korea, Ri said.
Over the years, as Pyongyang raced to build a nuclear arsenal, the world has often turned to its neighbors for help: China, because of its economic leverage over the North, and South Korea, because it would suffer the most in any military confrontation.
Now, China and South Korea have been left squirming on the sidelines, with Kim having been essentially granted his wish: dealing directly with the United States, which the North believes has the most to give.
To the North Koreans, the United States can offer a peace treaty, diplomatic recognition, the easing of sanctions and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea, which the North considers its existential threat.
Since Kim came to power nearly six years ago, North Korea has accelerated its nuclear and missile tests to grab Washington’s attention and to force negotiations on terms favorable to the North, according to South Korean intelligence officials and analysts who study Kim’s motives.
When Trump made his threat Tuesday it gave Kim a perfect chance to square off directly against the United States, they said. In an unprecedented personal statement Friday, Kim called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard,” and Ri raised the prospect of exploding a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific.
To back up such talk, Kim will probably carry out more weapons tests, analysts said.
“We now can’t avoid the military tensions on the Korean Peninsula further escalating,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea expert at the Sejong Institute, a think tank near Seoul, the South’s capital. The standoff is intensifying partly because “South Korea lacks capabilities to confront North Korea while the North ignores the South and insists on dealing only with the United States,” Cheong added.
As the crisis spiraled over the last few days, China found itself a bystander — an uncomfortable role for President Xi Jinping, who was most likely seething about Kim and about the North Korean government’s criticism of China’s most vaunted institution, the Communist Party, as its leadership prepares to meet, analysts said.
The quiet in Beijing illustrated China’s almost complete lack of influence in controlling the North and its unsuccessful efforts to persuade Trump to tamp down his language, they said.
Fearful of failing and of losing face in a peacemaking role, Xi would be reluctant to make any diplomatic or strategic moves before the party congress opens on Oct. 18, analysts said.
Xi was left merely humoring Trump by agreeing to tougher sanctions at the United Nations this past week.
President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has also found room for diplomacy shrinking, as North Korea and the United States locked themselves in what he called an escalating “vicious cycle” of provocations and sanctions.
North Korea has not responded to Moon’s calls for dialogue as it accelerates its missile and nuclear tests. When he came to power in May, Moon found little leverage left over North Korea: Under his conservative predecessors, South Korea had cut off all trade ties and pulled out all investments in North Korea.
“We need a breathing room, an easing of tensions,” Moon said Friday.