WASHINGTON (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): North Korea’s two recent ballistic missile tests represent a “serious escalation” the United States said on Thursday (March 10) in Washington.
The US “after careful analysis” has concluded that Pyongyang’s successive tests on Feb 26 and March 4 “involved a relatively new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system that (North Korea) is developing,” a senior Administration official told journalists.
Earlier this week the US’ Indo Pacific Command ordered “intensified intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance collection activities in the Yellow Sea, as well as enhanced readiness among our ballistic missile defence forces in the region” the senior official said.
On Friday in Washington, the US Treasury will be announcing new action to help prevent North Korea from accessing foreign items and technology that enable it to advance prohibited weapons programmes.
But the official also said the two tests were not in the same range as the three ICBM tests North Korea conducted in 2017.
“This is an ICBM-capable platform” the senior official said. “But these launches themselves, these tests themselves, did not demonstrate ICBM range and distance.”
They were “likely to test elements of this new system before the DPRK conducts a launch in full range, which they will potentially attempt to disguise as a space launch” the official said, referring to the country by its official name the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Nevertheless, the launches were a “brazen violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, seriously raise tensions and risk destabilising the security situation in the region” the official said. And, “unlike its past tests, the DPRK tried to hide these escalatory steps” the official said.
The US assessment had been shared with allies and partners, including South Korea, Japan and the UN, he said.
“We continue to seek diplomacy and we are prepared to meet without preconditions” he said. US President Joe Biden had made clear he was open to meeting Kim Jong-un “when there is a working agreement on the table, which will need to be based on working level negotiation.”
“The DPRK continues to not respond,” the official said.
The senior official reiterated the US’ “shared objective” with allies - complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
The announcement came only hours after 61-year-old conservative Yoon Suk-yeol emerged the winner of a dramatic, closely fought presidential election in South Korea.
This could signal a shift in South Korea’s policy towards the North. The president-elect, a former anti-corruption prosecutor, believes South Korea under President Moon Jae-in has been appeasing the North.
He has at various times threatened a pre-emptive strike, more swiftly responding to missile tests, and called North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who is 38, a “rude boy.”
The outgoing administration of President Moon “volunteered to play middleman between the US and North Korea but was dumped by both in the end,” Yoon said in a pre-election Facebook post.
Already this year alone, North Korea has conducted a record-breaking 11 weapons tests.
All this – and the lesson of the Ukraine invasion - does not augur well for North-South relations, analysts say.
Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in the 1990s as part of a security deal when the erstwhile Soviet Union of which it was a part, fragmented.
The state of South Korea’s alliances with the US and Japan is good, said Dr Sue Mi Terry, director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Centre for Korean History and Public Policy at the Wilson Centre in Washington.
But Russia's invasion of Ukraine only reinforces North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s thinking that states that give up nuclear weapons get overthrown, she told a post-election panel hosted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“Watching this crisis, Kim Jong-n can only calculate that, if Ukraine had kept their nuclear weapons, maybe Russia would not be attacking it right now,” Dr Terry said.
“Secondly, the Biden administration, and the world, is completely distracted. Literally, there's no reason right now for North Korea not to take advantage of this and launch more provocations, which they were going to do anyway - even an ICBM or a nuclear test.”
Meanwhile on Thursday morning President Biden tweeted: "I spoke today with President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol of the Republic of Korea to congratulate him on his election."
"I look forward to working with him to continue to strengthen the U.S.-ROK Alliance and take on shared global challenges."
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