TOKYO (AP) — North Korea appears to have tested a new short-range missile — and US President Donald Trump’s resolve to keep it from doing more of the same in the future. The test early Saturday was quickly played down by Trump and his top advisers, who noted it was not the kind of long-range missile leader Kim Jong Un has refrained from launching since 2017. But the sudden activity on the North’s east coast, complete with fiery photos of a purported bull’s eye out to sea, alarmed Washington’s regional allies and suggests that Kim’s missiles are improving even as the Trump administration wrestles with how to get him back to the negotiating table. Kim personally supervised the test of what experts believe was a short-range ballistic missile first displayed by the North at a military parade early last year, along with a drill involving 240 millimeter- and 300 millimeter-caliber multiple rocket launchers. There remains some uncertainty over what was tested. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up South Korea’s military reported that various “projectiles” flew from 70 to 240 kilometers (44 to 149 miles) before splashing harmlessly into the Pacific. The activity prompted the 35th Fighter Wing at Misawa Air Base in northern Japan to tweet on its official account — in all capital letters — “MISSILE INBOUND.” The tweet was soon followed by an all clear, and an “enjoy your Saturday.” Trump moved quickly to minimize the significance of the test on his efforts to strike a nuclear deal with North Korea, tweeting that Kim “knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me.” Both leaders continue to claim they have a good personal relationship. But tensions have grown since they failed to make any deals during their most recent summit, in Hanoi in February. Kim and senior North Korean officials have since expressed open frustration with what Pyongyang claims is an inflexible and unrealistic posture at talks by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. Kim suggested last month that he intends to give Washington until the end of the year to change its negotiating strategy. If it doesn’t, he has warned, he will seek a different path. His position has created a dilemma for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has tried to act as a middleman. Seoul called an emergency meeting Saturday of top officials at its presidential Blue House and urged North Korea to stop committing acts that would raise military tensions. But such calls ring hollow in Pyongyang since the South has decided to go ahead with joint military exercises with the US that Pyongyang sees as provocative. The North strongly condemned a drill of a South Korea-based THAAD air-defense system by US troops just two weeks ago. The North’s missile test also came just days after the United States tested its Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Base in California. Though such launches are planned well in advance and not directed at any specific country, they are seen by North Korea as highly provocative. North Korea last conducted a major missile test in November 2017 when it flight-tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that demonstrated the potential capability to reach deep into the US mainland. During the diplomacy that followed those weapons tests, Kim said the North would not test nuclear devices or ICBMs. The latest missile, which the North’s media referred to only as a “tactical guided weapon,” fell well below that threshold. It is believed to be modeled after Russia’s 9K720 Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile system. The solid-fuel missile, first revealed in a military parade in Pyongyang in February last year, is designed to be maneuverable during flight to boost its accuracy and thwart interception. Experts noted that despite its physical resemblance, the North Korean missile may be a less capable version of the Russian Iskander, which can carry a nuclear warhead and strike targets as far away as 500 kilometers (310 miles). A less capable version is still a clear danger to U.S. allies and American troops stationed in the region. The distance between Wonsan, where the launch was held, and the South Korean capital of Seoul is roughly 200 kilometers (124 miles). More than 20,000 US troops are based in the South and another 50,000 in Japan. All are within range of the North’s short- or medium-range missile arsenal. North Korea’s state-run media had a propaganda heyday with the launch. The ruling party newspaper showed Kim supervising the drill from a camouflaged tent with a desk and computer screens monitoring a rocky offshore outcropping that was used as a target. One photo has him smiling broadly while a screen shows the top of the crag enveloped in a ball of flames. It also showed the missile rising from a mobile launcher and stressed how the drill was “organized without an advance notice” to underscore the need for realistic combat readiness. North Korea’s coverage of the developments over the past year presents a sharp contrast to the focus outside of the country on denuclearization. The North’s media has centered its attention on the portrayal of Kim as a strong leader on the global stage seeking to free the country of what the North calls unjustified sanctions so that it can develop its economy. Denuclearization is almost never the main topic of its reports. That was the official message yet again on Sunday. In its report on the drills, the state media stressed the need for the military to be on high alert to “defend the political sovereignty and economic self-sustenance of the country … bearing in mind the iron truth that genuine peace and security are ensured and guaranteed only by powerful strength.”<doc-sep>“Yeah, let’s break this down. This is a message that has several different audiences.” North Korean President Kim Jong-Un reportedly supervised a “strike drill” for multiple rocket launchers in the East Sea, according to a Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report on Sunday night. The state news agency added that the purpose of the exercise was to test the performance of “large-caliber long-range multiple rocket launchers and tactical guided weapons by defense units.” Reuters reported that photographs released by KCNA “showed the tactical guided weapons fired could be short-range, ground-to-ground ballistic missiles, according to Kim Dong-yub, a military expert at Korea’s Kyungnam University’s Institute of Far Eastern (IFE)Studies.” While the missile launch would be in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, the launch did not seem to involve the use of long-range ballistic missile which Reuters said the U.S. has deemed as a more direct threat. “What was sobering for me was that unexpectedly, there was a photo of short-range, ground-to-ground ballistic missile, otherwise known as the North’s version of Iskander,” IFE’s Kim told Reuters. The test came after Jong-Un met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on April 25 and 26. During the meeting, Jong-Un stressed that he needed a guarantee of sanctions relief before it would start to dismantle all nuclear programs. The last time the communist state launched a missile test was in November 2017. At that time, Pyongyang claimed its Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic (ICBM) launch was a success. What Does Kim Want? Some analysts claimed that the North Korean military exercise was an effort to increase pressure on Washington D.C. following the collapse of talks with President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, last February. “It is an expression of the North’s frustration over stalled talks with the United States. It is a message that it could return to the previous confrontational mode if there is no breakthrough in the stalemate,” Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum, told the Irish Times. Jean Lee, the Wilson Center’s policy expert, echoed Uk’s statement, saying that the missile test was a sign that Jong-Un wants to talk. “Yeah, let’s break this down. This is a message that has several different audiences. First and foremost, remember that it was President Trump who walked away from that negotiation Hanoi, by all accounts. And so what Kim Jong Un is doing is he’s getting impatient. He’s frustrated. He wants to accelerate the pace of getting back to that negotiation. And so this is a reminder,” Lee told NPR. Others suggested that North Korea’s test was also a protest over continued joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises. Pyongyang condemned the exercises during the meeting between Jong-Un and Putin in Moscow last April. US Reaction to North Korea Missile Test U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed the significance of the North Korean test by saying Pyongyang would not do anything that could harm ties with the U.S. “Anything in this very interesting world is possible, but I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it. He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!” Trump tweeted. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also downplayed the missile test but by referring to how the North Korean missile test moratorium only focused on intercontinental missile systems. “The moratorium was focused, very focused, on intercontinental missile systems, the ones that threaten the United States for sure,” Pompeo told Fox News’ Chris Wallace. Some analysts were critical of the the U.S. response and worried that Pompeo’s statement risked giving North Korea the green light to another more provocative test. The test also means that Jong-Un has broken a commitment with Trump to not test any types of missiles. “Even if internally the U.S. administration accepted that the missile-testing moratorium applied only narrowly to ICBMs, as Kim has publicly stated, don’t say it,” Vipin Narang, an expert on North Korea’s nuclear program at MIT, told Vox. “At least stick with the vague language of ‘long-range missiles’ to cover the weapons that threaten our forces and allies in the region. Jeffrey Lewis, another North Korean analyst and Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute added in a tweet, “The South Koreans aren’t on board with Pompeo’s ‘test anything you want as long as it can’t reach me’ standard.”<doc-sep>In the weeks before North Korea fired rockets and guided weapons on Saturday, President Trump countermanded the Treasury Department, reversing an announcement that it was tightening economic sanctions against the country. The reason, his press secretary declared, was that “President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” Now, nearly a year after beginning a bold experiment in the power of personal diplomacy, Mr. Trump has run headlong into its limits. He has discovered that friendship between leaders of bitter nuclear rivals may produce good television, but that it is not a counterproliferation strategy. After gaining few tangible economic benefits from two summit meetings, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is now turning to a well-worn playbook written by his father and grandfather. On Saturday, the North fired a volley of projectiles off its eastern coast in a move that analysts said was intended to escalate the pressure on Mr. Trump to return to the negotiating table. And as Mr. Trump heads into the 2020 election, that strategy may threaten what the president has trumpeted as a signature diplomatic initiative, depriving him of the stump-speech moments to declare he brought peace where his predecessors failed.<doc-sep>President Donald Trump's attempt to make a "great deal" with North Korea over its nuclear program appears increasingly in peril as Kim Jong Un has ordered new missile tests and directed his country's military "to cope with any emergency." "Nobody's happy," Trump said Thursday after North Korea launched short-range missiles for the second time in less than a week. On Friday, Kim told his forces to be on high alert after the U.S. seized a large cargo ship that was attempting to smuggle coal out of North Korea in violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions. "(Kim) stressed the need to further increase the capability of the defense units in the forefront area and on the western front to carry out combat tasks and keep full combat posture," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), a state media outlet that rarely quotes Pyongyang's leader directly, reported. KCNA said Kim "set forth important tasks for further increasing the strike ability" of North Korea's weapon systems. Diplomacy? :North Korea launches second projectile in less than a week Analysts said the implications for Trump's diplomatic efforts at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula were not entirely clear, and that while North Korea's escalating rhetoric and military preparedness did not signal war, it showed how far apart the two nations were after two historic summits between Trump and North Korea's leader. "These new developments show that neither country is able to sustain any kind of negotiation beyond the summits," said Waheguru Pal Singh, a defense and foreign policy expert at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, who has also consulted for the United Nations on international peace and security issues. "For me, the key marker will be if the U.S. resumes joint military exercises with South Korea, and how the North reacts," he said, referring to longstanding annual large-scale Washington-Seoul military drills Trump ended in March to reduce tensions. About 28,000 U.S. troops plus thousands more family members and Department of Defense employees are stationed in South Korea, and their presence, and the joint military exercises, have for years been a source of North Korean anger. The projectiles North Korea launched Saturday, and then Thursday, were the first since Pyongyang paused missile launches in late 2017. All splash-landed in the Pacific. Trump has refused to yield to North Korean demands to lift economic sanctions. Sanctions no-no:U.S. seizes North Korea cargo ship linked to exporting tons of coal South Korea and U.S. intelligence analysts are still examining the missiles, but Michael Elleman, a missile defense expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank with offices in London and Washington, said they resemble the Russian-designed Iskander, which has a range of about 200 miles and can fit a warhead. "Iskander can exploit gaps in South Korean and American missile-defense coverage," Elleman wrote in a blog post on 38 North, a Koreas-focused website. There was further evidence that North Korea may be ramping up its military capabilities even as the Trump administration has insisted the president has maintained a good relationship with Kim despite summits in Singapore and Vietnam that ended with no tangible denuclearization steps for Pyongyang. On Thursday night, Beyond Parallel, a program affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a global affairs think tank, published new satellite images that appeared to show that North Korea has been secretly operating a missile base that it has never previously disclosed. In its analysis of the images, Beyond Parallel said that, though unconfirmed, the "Yusang-ni" base may house intercontinental ballistic missiles with a "first strike" capability against targets located throughout East Asia, the Pacific and the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has previously said that any missile tests by North Korea involving long-range or intercontinental missiles would be a diplomatic red line. "It is evident that Trump's diplomatic strategy has reached an impasse," said Richard Caplan, a professor of international relations at Oxford University, England. "And trade frictions with China mean that he can't count on Beijing to rein Kim in," he added, referring to fraught trade negotiations between the U.S. and China. North Korea relies on China for aid, fuel and other imports. Beijing has acted as a buffer between Pyongyang, a close ally, and Washington. Beijing's escalating trade war with Washington may make it feel less inclined to act as a referee. Trade war:U.S., China break off latest trade talks without announcing deal Meanwhile, the Trump administration is embroiled in another front: Iran. The White House has increasingly appeared to risk military confrontation with Tehran following U.S. and Israeli intelligence warnings that Iran or its proxies could be planning attacks on U.S. troops and facilities in the Middle East. On Friday, the Pentagon said it was adding a missile defense system and warship to the aircraft carrier strike group and B-52 bombers it has already sent to the Persian Gulf to meet any Iranian threats. "It's important that Iran understand that an attack on Americans or our interests would be met with an appropriate response," said Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. He said the threats were credible. Yet the vast majority of Iran-watchers and experts have accused the Trump administration, in particular Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, of potentially inflating the intelligence because of an almost obsessive dislike for Iran. "Trump is treating North Korea as if it has no nuclear weapons, and Iran as if it does," said Singh, the defense expert at New York University, referring to what he said was the president's apparent willingness to take Kim at his word that he wants to denuclearize while ignoring repeated verifications from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog that Tehran has been complying with the 2015 nuclear accord Trump withdrew the U.S. from. "It's a very unorthodox approach," he said. Read more:Download the USA TODAY app<doc-sep>
SEOUL (Reuters) - The leader of North Korea ordered its military to boost its strike capability as he directed another missile firing, state media said on Friday, as tensions grew over tests that appeared to show development of a new advanced missile system. North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un supervises a military drill in North Korea, in this May 10, 2019 photo supplied by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). KCNA via REUTERS Kim Jong Un’s call for a “full combat posture” follows the U.S. seizure of a large North Korean cargo ship accused of illicit coal shipments in violation of U.N. sanctions. The increased tensions come amid a gridlock in dialogue after the second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump collapsed over U.S. demands for Pyongyang’s nuclear disarmament and Kim’s demands for relief from sanctions. “(Kim) stressed the need to further increase the capability of the defense units in the forefront area and on the western front to carry out combat tasks and keep full combat posture to cope with any emergency,” KCNA news agency reported. He noted “genuine peace and security of the country are guaranteed only by the strong physical force capable of defending its sovereignty,” KCNA said, adding he “set forth important tasks for further increasing the strike ability.” The test of two short-range missiles on Thursday and the firing of a series of projectiles on Saturday were the first missile launches by the North since an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in November 2017. Kim later declared the building of its nuclear force was complete and went on to hold three summit meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and two with Trump. Both Trump and Moon said the latest missile tests were not helpful but suggested they would not scupper dialogue. “I know they want to negotiate, they’re talking about negotiating. But I don’t think they’re ready to negotiate,” Trump told reporters. “They were smaller missiles, they were short-range missiles,” he said. “Nobody’s happy about it but we’re taking a good look and we’ll see.” South Korea’s Moon said on Thursday the tests were likely a reaction to the failed second summit with Trump in Hanoi in February, but he thought North Korea remained hopeful of continuing negotiations. ILLICIT SHIPMENT The latest tests were swiftly followed by U.S. test-launches of the intercontinental ballistic missile Minuteman III over the Pacific and the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) off Florida. They also coincided with a visit to the South by U.S. special envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun, who met his South Korean counterpart and was scheduled to hold talks with presidential Blue House and Unification Ministry officials. During his meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on Friday, Biegun said “the door is still open for North Korea to return to the negotiating table,” and that it is very important for South Korea and the United States to continue communication and cooperation, the ministry said in a statement. Thursday’s missiles were fired from Kusong, northwest of the capital Pyongyang. One missile flew 420 km (260 miles) and the other 270 km (168 miles), both reaching an altitude of about 50 km (30 miles) before falling into the sea, South Korea’s military said. North Korean state media did not give details of the missiles. Slideshow ( 7 images ) South Korean and U.S. military analysts will try to determine if the Russian-development Iskander short-range ballistic missile system was used, Ahn Gyu-baek, the defense committee chairman in South Korea’s parliament, told reporters. Japan, which is also in striking distance of North Korean missiles and saw them fly over its territory before Kim’s self-declared moratorium on long-range missile launches in April 2018, said on Friday the latest missile tests violated U.N. resolutions. China, the North’s main diplomatic backer, said it had no firm information on the tests. State Councillor and senior diplomat Wang Yi said Korean peninsula issues should be resolved through dialogue with the goal of denuclearization. Analysts said the multiple tests signaled that North Korea is serious about deploying an operational fleet of the missiles, which could be used in the opening hours of any war with the United States and South Korea. Washington has given no sign it will budge on the North’s demand to lift some sanctions as it announced on Thursday the seizure of a North Korean cargo vessel that it said was involved in the illicit shipping of coal.