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| A North Korean soldier watches the South Korean side at the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in South Korea Thursday, April 4, 2013. South Korea's defense minister said Thursday North Korea has moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast, but said it is not capable of hitting the United States. |
SEOUL, South
Korea (AP) -- After a series of escalating threats, North Korea has
moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast, South
Korea's defense minister said Thursday. But he emphasized that the
missile was not capable of reaching the United States and that there are
no signs that the North is preparing for a full-scale conflict.
North
Korea has been railing against U.S.-South Korean military exercises
that began in March and are to
continue until the end of this month. The
allies insist the exercises in South Korea are routine, but the North
calls them rehearsals for an invasion and says it needs nuclear weapons
to defend itself. The North has also expressed anger over tightened U.N.
sanctions for its February nuclear test.
Analysts
say the ominous warnings in recent weeks are probably efforts to
provoke softer policies from South Korea, to win diplomatic talks with
Washington and solidify the image of young North Korean leader
Kim Jong
Un. Many of the threats come in the middle of the night in Asia -
daytime for the U.S. audience.
The report of
the movement of the missile came hours after North Korea's military
warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller,
lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. The reference to smaller
weapons could be a claim that North Korea has improved its nuclear
technology, or a bluff.
The North is not
believed to have mastered the technology needed to miniaturize nuclear
bombs enough to mount them on long-range missiles. Nor has it
demonstrated that those missiles, if it has them at all, are accurate.
It also could be years before the country completes the laborious
process of creating enough weaponized fuel to back up its nuclear
threats.
South Korean Defense Minister Kim
Kwan-jin said he did not know the reasons behind the North's missile
movement, and that it "could be for testing or drills."
He
dismissed reports in Japanese media that the missile could be a KN-08,
which is believed to be a long-range missile that if operable could hit
the United States.
Kim told lawmakers at a
parliamentary committee meeting that the missile has "considerable
range" but not enough to hit the U.S. mainland.
The
range he described could refer to a mobile North Korean missile known
as the Musudan, believed to have a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,800
miles). That would make Japan and South Korea potential targets - along
with U.S. bases in both countries - but there are doubts about the
missile's accuracy.
The Pentagon announced
that it will hasten the deployment of a missile defense system to the
U.S. Pacific
territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against
a possible attack.
Experts say North Korea
has not shown that it has accurate long-range missiles. Some suspect
that an apparent long-range missile unveiled by the North at a parade
last year was actually a mockup.
"From what we
know of its existing inventory, North Korea has short- and medium-range
missiles that could complicate a situation on the Korean Peninsula (and
perhaps reach Japan), but we have not seen any evidence that it has
long-range missiles that could strike the continental U.S., Guam or
Hawaii," James Hardy, Asia Pacific editor of IHS Jane's Defence Weekly,
wrote in a recent analysis.
Kim, the South
Korean defense minister, said that if North Korea were preparing for a
full-scale conflict, there would be signs such as the mobilization of a
number of units, including supply and rear troops, but South Korean
military officials have found no such preparations.
"(North
Korea's recent threats) are rhetorical threats. I believe the odds of a
full-scale provocation are
small," he said. But he added that North
Korea might mount a small-scale provocation such as its 2010 shelling of
a South Korean island, an attack that killed four people.
At times, North Korea has gone beyond rhetoric.
On
Tuesday, it announced it would restart a plutonium reactor it had shut
down in 2007. A U.S. research institute said Wednesday that satellite
imagery shows that construction needed for the restart has already
begun.
For a second day Thursday, North Korean
border authorities denied entry to South Koreans who manage jointly run
factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong. South Koreans already at
the plant were being allowed to return home.
South
Korea has prepared a military contingency plan should North Korea hold
South Korean workers hostage in Kaesong, Defense Minister Kim said. He
wouldn't elaborate.
Outraged over comments in
the South about possible hostage-taking and a military response from
Seoul, a North Korean government-run committee threatened to pull North
Korean workers out of Kaesong as well.
The
parading of U.S. air and naval power within view of the Korean peninsula
- first a few long-range bombers, then stealth fighters, then ships -
is as much about psychological war as real war. The U.S. wants to
discourage North Korea's young leader from starting a fight that could
escalate to renewed war with South Korea.
North
Korea's military statement Thursday, from an unidentified spokesman
from the General Bureau of the Korean People's Army, said its troops had
been authorized to counter U.S. "aggression" with "powerful practical
military counteractions," including nuclear weapons.
It
said America's "hostile policy" and "nuclear threat" against North
Korea "will be smashed by the strong will of all the united service
personnel and people and cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified
nuclear strike means."
White House spokesman
Jay Carney has called on Russia and China, two countries he said have
influence on North Korea, to use that influence to persuade the North to
change course.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich criticized a move by the North
Korean parliament this week to declare the country in effect a nuclear
weapons state.
"It's categorically
unacceptable to see such defiant neglect by Pyongyang of U.N. Security
Council resolutions and fundamental regulations in the area of
non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also had sharp words for the North.
"Nuclear
threat is not a game," Ban said Thursday in Madrid. "It's very serious
and I think they have gone too far in the rhetoric. I am concerned that
if by any misjudgment, by any miscalculation of the situation, a crisis
happens in the Korean Peninsula. This really would have very serious
implications."
South Korea's Defense Ministry
said its military is ready to deal with any provocation by North Korea.
"I can say we have no problem in crisis management," deputy ministry
spokesman Wee Yong-sub told reporters.
On
Sunday, Kim Jong Un led a high-level meeting of party officials who
declared building the economy and "nuclear armed forces" as the nation's
priorities.
North Korea is believed to be
working toward building an atomic bomb small enough to mount on a
long-range missile. Long-range rocket launches designed to send
satellites into space in 2009 and 2012 were widely considered covert
tests of missile technology, and North Korea has conducted three
underground nuclear tests.
"I don't believe
North Korea has the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear
weapons mounted on missiles, and won't for many years. Its ability to
target and strike South Korea is also very limited," nuclear scientist
Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Center for International
Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said this week.
In
comments posted on CISAC's website, Hecker said North Korea knows a
nuclear attack would be met with "a devastating nuclear response."
Hecker
has estimated that North Korea has enough plutonium to make several
crude nuclear bombs. Its announcement Tuesday that it would restart a
plutonium reactor indicated that it intends to produce more nuclear
weapons material.
The U.S.-Korea Institute at
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies has analyzed
recent commercial satellite imagery of the Nyongbyon nuclear facility,
where the reactor was shut down in 2007 under the terms of a disarmament
agreement. A cooling tower for the reactor was destroyed in 2008.
The
analysis published Wednesday on the institute's website, 38 North, says
that rebuilding the tower would take six months, but a March 27 photo
shows building work may have started for an alternative cooling system
that could take just weeks. Experts estimate it could take three months
to a year to restart the plant.
