North Korea stages massive live-fire drill as US submarine makes South
Korea port call
Straits Times,
April 25, 2017
SEOUL (REUTERS)
- North Korea put on a massive live-fire drill on Tuesday (April 25) to
mark the foundation of its military, a media report said, as a US submarine
docked in South Korea in a show of force amid growing concern over Pyongyang’s
nuclear and missile programmes.
The port call by
the USS Michigan came as a US aircraft carrier strike group steams for Korean
waters and as the top nuclear envoys from South Korea, Japan, and the United
States met in Tokyo to discuss the North’s refusal to give up its nuclear
programme.
Fears have risen
in recent weeks that North Korea could soon conduct another nuclear test or
missile launch in defiance of United Nations sanctions.
South Korea’s
Yonhap News Agency reported that the North appeared to have deployed a large
number of long-range artillery units in the region of Wonsan on its east coast
on Tuesday, conducting a large-scale live firing drill.
The report,
citing an unidentified government source, said the live-fire exercise was
possibly supervised by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The South’s Defence
Ministry could not immediately confirm the report.
North
Korea defiantly said in a state media commentary marking the 85th anniversary
of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army’s that its military was prepared
“to bring to closure the history of US scheming and nuclear blackmail”.
“There is no
limit to the strike power of the People’s Army armed with our style of
cutting-edge military equipment including various precision and miniaturised
nuclear weapons and submarine-launched ballistic missiles,” the official Rodong
Sinmun newspaper said in a front-page editorial.
South Korea’s
Navy said it was conducting a live-fire exercise with US Navy destroyers on
Tuesday in waters west of the Korean peninsula and would soon join the USS Carl
Vinson aircraft carrier strike group approaching the region.
The carrier
group was sent to the region as a warning to North Korea and a show of
solidarity with US allies.
Japan’s Chief
Cabinet Secretary Yoshide Suga told a media briefing that China’s nuclear envoy
Wu Dawei would hold talks with Japanese Foreign Ministry officials on Tuesday.
A ministry source said Wu was likely to meet his Japanese nuclear counterpart
on Wednesday.
Emerging from
talks with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, the US envoy for North
Korea policy, Joseph Yun, said: “As we discuss these things all our steps and
every part of them will be in coordination and consultation with our partners.”
RARE SENATE
BRIEFING
Matching the
flurry of diplomatic and military activity in North Asia, the State Department
in Washington said on Monday that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would
chair a special ministerial meeting of the UN Security Council on North Korea
on Friday.
Tillerson, along
with Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats
and Joint Chiefs chairman General Joseph Dunford, would also hold a rare
briefing for the entire US Senate on North Korea on Wednesday, Senate aides
said.
On Monday, US
President Donald Trump called for tougher new UN sanctions on Pyongyang, saying
the North was a global threat and “a problem that we have to finally solve”.
“The status quo
in North Korea is also unacceptable,” Trump told a meeting with the 15 UN
Security Council ambassadors, including China and Russia, at the White House.
“The council must be prepared to impose additional and stronger sanctions on
North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”
South Korean and
US officials have feared for some time that a sixth North Korean nuclear test
or the latest in a string of missile launches could be imminent.
“SERIOUSLY
MISREAD”
The official
China Daily said on Tuesday it was time for Pyongyang and Washington to take a
step back from harsh rhetoric and heed the voices of reason calling for a
peaceful resolution.
“Judging from
their recent words and deeds, policymakers in Pyongyang have seriously misread
the UN sanctions, which are aimed at its nuclear/missile provocations, not its
system or leadership,” the newspaper said in an editorial. “They are at once
perilously overestimating their own strength and underestimating the hazards
they are brewing for themselves,” it said.
In a phone
conversation with Trump on Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for all
sides to exercise restraint.
As the carrier
group drills continued, the USS Michigan arrived in the South Korean port of
Busan on Tuesday, the US Navy said. The nuclear-powered submarine is built to
carry and launch ballistic missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles.
As well as his
military show of force, Trump has also sought to pressure China to do more to
rein in its nuclear-armed neighbour.
China, North
Korea’s sole major ally, has in turn been angered by Pyongyang’s belligerence,
as well as its nuclear and missile programmes.
Angered by the
approach of the carrier group, which could arrive within days, North Korea said
the deployment of the USS Carl Vinson was “an extremely dangerous act by those
who plan a nuclear war to invade”.
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