Are you from South or North Korea? Send us your experiences.
(CNN) -- North Korea is "skating very close to a
dangerous line" after weeks of saber-rattling, U.S. Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel warned Wednesday as northeast Asia watched for an expected
missile test.
"Their actions and their
words have not helped defuse a combustible situation," Hagel told
reporters at the Pentagon. He said the United States and its allies want
to see North Korean rhetoric "ratcheted down," but if that doesn't
happen, "our country is fully prepared to deal with any contingency."
"We have every capacity
to deal with any action North Korea will take to protect this country
and the interests of this country and our allies," Hagel said.
American radar and
satellites are trained on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, where
the communist government of Kim Jong Un is believed to have prepared
mobile ballistic missiles for launch at any time, U.S. and South Korean
officials warned.
Japan has deployed
missile defense systems around Tokyo, some Chinese tour groups have
canceled visits to North Korea and the top U.S. commander in the Pacific
said Tuesday that he couldn't
Cheney to GOP leaders: 'We're in deep doo-doo' on North Korea
Since December, North
Korea has put a satellite in orbit atop a long-range rocket; conducted a
nuclear bomb test, its third since 2006; and claimed to be prepared for
pre-emptive nuclear attacks on the United States, though most analysts
believe it does not yet have that capability.
The north has given ample
warning to the world before previous long-range rocket launches -- but
it is keeping everyone guessing about what it might do this time around.
Intelligence suggests
that North Korea may be planning "multiple missile launches" in the
coming days beyond two Musudan mobile missiles it has placed along its
east coast, Pentagon officials told CNN. The officials did not have
specifics on the numbers of other missiles and launchers.
One official said the
North Koreans are military "masters of deception," and may have planned
all along to focus the world's attention on the Musudans while they plan
multiple launches of other missiles. That's a tactic they have used in
the past, the official said.
The United States is less troubled about the other missiles, a second Pentagon official told CNN.
"We've been seeing some
launchers moving around. These are smaller and don't cause us as much
concerns," that official said. "We think these movements are within
seasonal norms for their exercises."
But he didn't discount the possibility that they might launch some of those, as they often do.
The Musudan is an
untested weapon that he said has a range as far as 3,500 kilometers
(2,175 miles). That would mean it could reach as far as Guam, a Western
Pacific territory that is home to U.S. naval and air bases and where the
United States recently said it was placing missile defense systems.
After a launch, U.S.
satellites and radars in the region would be able to calculate the
trajectory of missiles within minutes and quickly conclude whether they
are on a test path headed for open ocean or potentially headed for land
areas such as Japan.
The United States and Japan would then have to decide whether to try to shoot the missiles down, U.S. officials say.
White House has message for North Korea
What will happen if missile launches?
Seoul prepared but thinks attack unlikely
North Korea's 'bluff for rewards' history
Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday told CNN that despite being an ally of North
Korea, it stands with the United States.
"On North Korea, we have
no differences with the United States. One just shouldn't scare anyone
with military maneuvers and there's a chance things might calm down," he
said.
U.S., North Korean officials met secretly in March
A launch without warning?
South Korean Foreign
Minister Yun Byung-se said at a parliamentary hearing Wednesday that
"according to intelligence obtained by our side and the U.S., the
possibility of a missile launch by North Korea is very high," the
semiofficial South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
Yun said he was basing his assessment on South Korean and U.S. intelligence.
On Tuesday, a U.S.
official said that the American government believes a test launch could
happen at any time and without North Korea issuing a standard notice to
commercial aviation and maritime shipping that would warn planes and
vessels to stay away from the missile's path.
The official, who
declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the information,
cautioned that most of the information comes from satellite imagery, so
it's impossible to reach a definitive conclusion because the United
States cannot gather information on the ground.
He said the launch could
be "imminent" but also cautioned that the United States "simply doesn't
know." Based on what the United States has seen, the belief is that the
missiles have received their liquid fuel and are ready for launch.
Speaking at a Senate
Armed Services hearing Tuesday, Locklear said the U.S. military would
not want to shoot down a North Korean missile whose trajectory would
send it into the open sea. But he said if a missile's path appeared to
threaten a U.S. ally, such as Japan, interceptor missiles could be used
to try to bring it down.
Japan poised to react 'calmly'
Japan's deployment of
missile defenses in Tokyo follows similar measures taken ahead of the
North's rocket launches last year. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told
reporters Tuesday that his government would do "calmly" whatever needed
to be done to protect its population.
In a sign of the level
of concern, however, the port city of Yokohama had to apologize for
prematurely publishing a warning of a missile launch on the Twitter page
of its emergency management agency. The tweet was up for about 20
minutes before being removed.
"This pre-written
message was a statement delivered accidentally due to an automatic
delivery malfunction," crisis management official Tachibana Masato said.
"We will work to make sure that this mechanism will be fixed and it
will operate correctly in the future to ensure that this sort of thing
does not happen again."
Since the U.N. Security
Council voted last month to impose new sanctions on Kim's regime over
the latest North Korean nuclear test, Pyongyang has kept up a steady
flow of words and acts that could give the impression of a nation
heading inexorably toward conflict.
On Tuesday, it advised
foreigners in South Korea to secure shelter or evacuate the country in
case of hostilities on the Korean Peninsula, the latest in a string of
ominous warnings.
It also kept more than
50,000 of its workers from an industrial complex jointly operated with
South Korea, which had been a key symbol of cooperation between the two
countries.
North Korea's war of words escalates: A timeline of the crisis
'Holiday atmosphere' inside North Korea
But on the same day,
state media published articles that described festive events and
international visits, suggesting a much less fraught situation inside
North Korea.
The state-run Korean
Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that various sporting events were
happening or scheduled to take place to mark the 101st anniversary next
week of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea and the
grandfather of Kim Jong Un.
"The ongoing sports
tournaments make the country seethe with holiday atmosphere," KCNA said.
Kim Il Sung's birthday, known as the Day of the Sun, is a major public
holiday in North Korea.
The planned events
include an international marathon Sunday in Pyongyang in which runners
from North Korea and other countries will participate. KCNA also noted
Tuesday the arrival by plane in North Korea of a delegation from the
Japan-Korea Society for Scientific and Educational Interchange.
Such visits sit
strangely alongside the North's warning last week to foreign diplomats
in Pyongyang that it wouldn't be able to guarantee their safety in the
event of a conflict.
Some North Korea
watchers have observed that the regime's domestic propaganda has focused
recently on efforts to promote economic development, while the
bellicose threats appear targeted primarily at a foreign audience.
Varying levels of concern
The angry rhetoric has
also failed to alarm South Koreans, who have lived through decades of
North Korean bombast. Residents of Seoul have continued to go
unflappably about their daily business.
"South Korea has been
living under such threats from the past, and we are always prepared for
it," South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae told CNN on
Wednesday. He called the current climate "a very ordinary situation."
"North Korea may launch missiles at any time, and our military is fully prepared for it," he said.
But the North's fiery
words appear to have had an effect on the American public, with 41% of
those surveyed saying they see the reclusive nation as an immediate
threat to the United States, according to a recent CNN/ORC International
poll.
That's up 13 percentage points in less than a month, CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.
"If North Korean leader
Kim Jong Un wanted to get the attention of the American public, his
strategy is starting to work," Holland said.
Andrei Lankov, a professor of history at Kookmin University in Seoul, noted the varying levels of concern in an opinion article for The New York Times published Tuesday.
"The farther one is from
the Korean Peninsula, the more one will find people worried about the
recent developments here," he said.
The tense situation does appear to have prompted some Chinese tour groups to call off upcoming trips to North Korea.
Hong Lei, a spokesman
for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said Wednesday that some agencies and
tourists had canceled plans, but he said the Chinese-North Korean border
continued to operate normally.
Western tourism agencies that organize visits to North Korea haven't so far reported any changes to their activities.
DMZ: Tensions high at knife-edge of Korean conflict
A troubled industrial zone
The most tangible signs
of disruption are in the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the manufacturing
zone on the North Korean side of the border where more than 120 South
Korean companies operate.
Last week, the North
started blocking South Korean personnel from crossing the border back
into the complex. And this week, it said it was pulling out the more
than 50,000 North Koreans who work inside the zone and temporarily
suspending activities there.
It had blocked the border crossing previously, in 2009, but pulling out the workers was a new step.
As of Wednesday
lunchtime, only a few hundred South Koreans remained inside the complex,
according to South Korean authorities, down from more than 800 before
the North started restricting entry.
Also on Wednesday, South
Korea accused the North of carrying out a wave of cyberattacks that
paralyzed the networks of major South Korean banks and broadcasters last
month. It is the first time that Seoul has formally pointed the finger
at Pyongyang for the hacking, which affected more than 48,000 computers.
CNN's Barbara Starr, Joe Sterling, Elise
Labott, K.J. Kwon, Brian Walker, Tim Schwarz, Kyung Lah, Judy Kwon,
David McKenzie, Tom Cohen and Dana Ford contributed to this report.
0 comments:
Post a Comment