While Kim Jong Un said his latest missile tests were aimed at South Korean “military warmongers,” the North Korean leader had a clear message for U.S. President Donald Trump: Bend in nuclear talks or bigger provocations may follow.
Kim oversaw the “power demonstration fire” of a new-type of tactical guided weapon Thursday “to send a solemn warning” to his southern rivals, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch on the launch. The report came a day after the regime launched what South Korea said were two short-range ballistic missiles that executed maneuvers to avoid detection before plunging into the sea east of the divided peninsula.
Although the report criticized only Seoul -- and made no mention of the U.S. or Trump -- it referenced “moves to introduce the ultramodern offensive weapons” and “hold military exercises” as the reason for the provocation. South Korea has taken both actions at the urging of the U.S., and North Korea warned separately last week that the allies’ planned joint drills could jeopardize his willingness to resume talks the Trump administration.
“My reading of this report is that the ‘power-demonstration firing’ was targeted at both the U.S. and South Korea,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based analyst with NK Pro. “By omitting any explicit mention of the U.S. in today’s report, North Korea sent the signal that it remains interested in talking with the U.S.”
The missile tests were part of a pattern of moves by Kim to signal his frustration with the U.S. just weeks after he agreed to restart talks during a historic meeting with Trump at the Demilitarized Zone. At the same time, Kim has attempted to preserve his relationship with Trump, sparing the American president from criticism and only testing weapons that don’t violate his pledge to not launch missiles that could reach the U.S.Trump appeared to validate that strategy during a television interview Thursday in which he shrugged off the latest weapon tests. “They really haven’t tested to missiles other than, you know, smaller ones, the -- which is something that lots test,” the president told the “Hannity” show on Fox News.
The missiles fired by North Korea Thursday could threaten all of South Korea, where some 28,500 U.S. troops are based, and violate United Nations sanctions. They were launched just hours after U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton departed Seoul.
Earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo told Bloomberg News that the door for diplomacy with North Korea remained open despite the launches and that he hoped working-level talks would begin in the next month or so. “Everybody tries to get ready for negotiations and create leverage and create risk for the other side,” Pompeo said in an interview.
Pompeo might also miss a chance to meet his North Korean counterpart at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gatherings in Bangkok next week. Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho won’t attend the meeting, the Yonhap News Agency reported Thursday, citing an unidentified person close to the matter.
Almost a month after Trump and Kim announced working-level talks, negotiating teams have yet to meet and discuss the leaders’ agreement last year to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The two sides have been divided over the scale of disarmament steps offered by Kim and the pace of sanctions relief proposed by the Americans.
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