RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events North Korea is Shooting Missiles!

The missile fired is thought to be an intermediate-range Musudan similar to this
North Korea has confirmed that it "successfully" fired a ballistic missile on Sunday in a test supervised by leader Kim Jong-un.

The device was described as a "surface-to-surface medium-to-long-range ballistic missile", the Korean state news agency KCNA reported.

South Korea's defence ministry called it an armed provocation to test the response of US President Donald Trump.

North Korea's latest ballistic missile test has been widely condemned.

The US, Japan and South Korea have requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the incident.

KCNA reported that the test of the Pukguksong-2 missile, a new type of strategic weapon said to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, was overseen by leader Kim Jong-un.

It added that the missile was fired at a high angle in consideration of neighbouring countries.

The rocket used a solid-fuel engine, the report said, which gives ballistic rockets greater power and range.

South Korea military experts said the rocket had been launched by a "cold-eject" system, which uses compressed gas for its initial thrust, a system employed for submarine-launched missiles.

North Korea missile: US says it will use military force 'if we must'

America's UN ambassador Nikki Haley says the US is prepared to defend itself and its allies

The US has said it will use its "considerable military forces" on North Korea "if we must", following Tuesday's long-range missile test.

US ambassador Nikki Haley said a new resolution will also be tabled against Pyongyang at the United Nations.

She described the test as a sharp military escalation and also threatened to use trade restrictions.

Hours after she spoke, the US and South Korea fired more missiles into the Sea of Japan as part of military drills.

But Pyongyang has said it would not negotiate unless the US ends its "hostile policy" against North Korea.

Tuesday's missile launch, the latest in a series of tests, was in defiance of a ban by the UN Security Council.

North Korea and President Trump lashed out at each other within hours on Tuesday, in both cases threatening to hit the other side with a barrage of "fire."

The threats, between the North Korean Army and Trump, came shortly after a report -- confirmed by Fox News -- that the regime has produced a compact nuclear warhead that could fit on a missile capable of reaching the United States.

Speaking at his Bedminster golf resort in New Jersey, Trump vowed to unleash “fire” and “fury.” He said that North Korea’s threats of nuclear war “will be met with fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

He continued, saying that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “has been threatening beyond a normal state,” and added that the communist country “best not make any more threats to the United States.”

North Korea soon fired back with a threat of its own. The Korean People’s Army claimed in a statement that it was looking into a plan to hit Guam, a U.S. territory, with missiles that would create an “enveloping fire” around the island.



The threat was released by state-run media, and said the purpose of striking Guam would be to subdue the U.S. military bases there, particularly the Anderson Air Force base where nuclear-bombers are stationed.

A different statement released said that the regime “could carry out a pre-emptive operation if the United States showed signs of provocation,” according to a Reuters report.

The threats from North Korea came days after the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to sanction the country. The resolution approved on Saturday bans North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore and seafood -- resources that are worth more than $1 billion to the regime.

• NORTH KOREA CONSIDERING FIRING MISSILES AT GUAM, PER STATE MEDIA
  
  TRUMP: NORTH KOREA 'WILL BE MET WITH FIRE AND FURY LIKE THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN' IF MORE THREATS EMERGE

His time in Celebrity Apprentice I'm sure will give him the leg up with dealing with North Korea.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/asia/north-korea-missile-launch/index.html

TOKYO — North Korea claimed Wednesday that the entire U.S. mainland is within reach after “successfully” testing a new kind of intercontinental ballistic missile, which it called the Hwasong-15 and said could carry a “super large heavy warhead.”

While Pyongyang is prone to exaggeration, its boast of having all of the United States in range was in line with experts’ calculations that the missile launched Wednesday, which flew 10 times higher than the International Space Station, could theoretically reach Washington, D.C.

“With this system, we can load the heaviest warhead and strike anywhere in the mainland United States,” North Korea’s most famous newsreader, Ri Chun Hee, said in a special live broadcast on state television. “This missile is far more technologically advanced than July’s Hwasong-14. This signifies that our rocket development process has been completed.”

If the missile had flown on a standard trajectory designed to maximize its reach, it would have had a range of more than 8,100 miles, said David Wright, co-director of the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Such a missile would have more than enough range to reach Washington, D.C.,” Wright said.

The U.S. capital is 6,850 miles from Pyongyang. The previous intercontinental ballistic missile tested, the Hwasong-14 tested on July 28, was in the air for 47 minutes and could have flown 6,500 miles were it on a normal trajectory. Hwasong means “Mars” in Korean.

The South Korean and Japanese governments both convened emergency national security council meetings after the launch, and both leaders talked to Trump by phone.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson let slip last week a few tantalizing details about one of the nation’s most secret military contingency plans: how the United States would try to race inside North Korea to seize its nuclear weapons if it ever saw evidence that Kim Jong-un’s government was collapsing.

For years, American diplomats have been trying to engage their Chinese counterparts in a discussion of this scenario, hoping to avoid a conflict between arriving American Special Forces — who have been practicing this operation for years — and the Chinese military, which would almost certainly pour over the border in a parallel effort.

And for years the Chinese have resisted the conversation, according to several former American officials who tried to engage them in joint planning. The Chinese feared that if news of a conversation leaked, Beijing would be seen as conspiring with the United States over plans for an eventual North Korean collapse, eroding any leverage that Beijing still held over Mr. Kim.


So it was surprising to Mr. Tillerson’s colleagues in the White House and the Pentagon when, in a talk to the Atlantic Council last week, he revealed that the Trump administration had already provided assurances to China’s leadership that if American forces landed in North Korea to search for and deactivate nuclear weapons, the troops would do their work and then retreat.

North Korea has defied past predictions of collapse, and one does not appear imminent. But if a collapse were to occur, the aftermath could present grave dangers. American officials have envisioned that North Korean officers, fearing the end of Mr. Kim’s government, might lob a nuclear weapon at South Korea or Japan as a last, desperate act — or detonate it on North Korean territory to make occupation impossible.

On Tuesday, speaking from note cards, Mr. Tillerson said at a conference on the Korea crisis that the United States and China “have had conversations about in the event that something happened — it could happen internal to North Korea; it might be nothing that we from the outside initiate — that if that unleashed some kind of instability, the most important thing to us would be securing those nuclear weapons they’ve already developed and ensuring that they — that nothing falls into the hands of people we would not want to have it.”

He added, “We’ve had conversations with the Chinese about how might that be done.”

He repeated his past assurance that the administration was not seeking “regime collapse” or “an accelerated unification of the Korean Peninsula.”

“We do not seek a reason to send our own military forces north of the demilitarized zone,” the dividing line between North and South, he said.

But if America’s hand is forced, he added, “we have had conversations that if something happened and we had to go across a line, we have given the Chinese assurances we would go back and retreat back to the south of the 38th parallel” when conditions allowed.

In other words, the United States would essentially cede North Korean territory to the Chinese military, or let China and South Korea figure out who would control 46,500 square miles of territory and take care of its 25 million occupants, many of whom already do not have enough to eat.

In an interview on other national security issues on Friday, a senior administration official who has been deeply involved in the North Korea contingency planning declined to speak about the issue, even to confirm that the conversations the secretary described had taken place.

The White House has been more focused on the embattled Mr. Tillerson’s public offer to begin talks with North Korea on any issues, even “the weather,” from which he backtracked on Friday in a presentation to the United Nations.

But the reference to planning for North Korean collapse, while not drawing wide notice, caught the attention of those who have been drawing up military plans for a number of possible scenarios, including American pre-emptive strikes. Asked whether Mr. Tillerson had referred by mistake to entreaties to the Chinese that previous administrations kept secret, Steven Goldstein, the new under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, said it was quite deliberate.

“The secretary reiterated the position he has taken in meetings with Chinese counterparts,” he said. “He would like the U.S. and Chinese military leaders to develop a plan for the safe disposition of North Korea’s nuclear weapons were the regime to collapse.” He added: “While the secretary has never advocated for regime change, we all have an obligation to be prepared for any scenario.”

There is no indication that the Chinese have responded, or that military officials have met — though Beijing would almost certainly keep that secret if it occurred.

According to current and former American officials, the contingency plans to seize North Korea’s nuclear arsenal have grown in complexity in recent years — largely because the North Korean arsenal has grown.

There are competing estimates among American intelligence agencies over how many weapons the North possesses. Most estimates range from 15 to 30 nuclear devices, but the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for protecting American troops on the Korean Peninsula, projected this year that the number could be in excess of 50.

The North is presumed to have undertaken an elaborate effort to hide the weapons. The result, one senior military official said recently, is that even if dozens of weapons were seized and deactivated, there would be no way to determine whether many more were still hidden away, perhaps under the control of surviving members of Mr. Kim’s military.

In the secret American rehearsals of how to execute a seizure of the North’s weapons — more of which are planned for the first half of next year, officials say — speed is of the essence.

Finding those weapons, landing “render safe” teams to disarm them and airlifting them out of the country would be a difficult enough task in peacetime. But the American planning assumes a three-way scramble to seize both weapons and territory, involving Chinese troops who may find themselves facing off against the United States and its South Korean allies.

“Washington should assume that any Korean conflict involving large-scale U.S. military operations will trigger a significant Chinese military intervention,” Oriana Skylar Mastro, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, wrote this month in the journal Foreign Affairs, in a provocative article titled “Why China Won’t Rescue North Korea.”

China, she wrote, “will likely attempt to seize control of key terrain, including North Korea’s nuclear sites,” most of which are within 60 miles or so of the Chinese border. Because of geographic advantage, they would probably arrive long before American forces.

In the past, American planning was based on an assumption that China would come to the aid of North Korea, as it did during the Korean War nearly seven decades ago. But Ms. Mastro, who also advises the United States Pacific Command, wrote that today “the Chinese military assume that it would be opposing, not supporting, North Korean troops.”

Her analysis mirrors what is increasingly becoming the dominant thinking among American military planners. That has made the secret discussion that Mr. Tillerson alluded to all the more vital. Curiously, some Chinese academics have begun writing about the need for the United States and China to prepare a joint strategy. Such public airing of the issue would have been banned in Chinese publications even a few years ago.

Mr. Tillerson’s public comments prompted memories of a lengthy conversation between the American ambassador in South Korea and a senior South Korean official in 2010. The details were revealed by WikiLeaks in a trove of 250,000 State Department cables that included secret discussions about how to deal with China’s ambitions for North Korean territory in the event of a collapse.

Over a lunchtime conversation, the South Korean diplomat confidently predicted to the American ambassador at the time, Kathleen Stephens, that North Korea would collapse “two to three years” after Kim Jong-il, the dictator at the time, died.

In fact, he died in 2011, but the predicted collapse never came. The diplomat then described plans to assure that Chinese companies would have plenty of commercial opportunities to mine minerals in the northern part of the peninsula. Ms. Stephens’s description of the lunch, sent back to Washington, included the caution that “China would clearly ‘not welcome’ any U.S. military presence north of the DMZ.”

There is no indication that those discussions included the sensitive issue of disposing of nuclear weapons. At the time, the North had only a handful.

There are competing estimates among American intelligence agencies over how many weapons the North possesses. Most estimates range from 15 to 30 nuclear devices, but the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for protecting American troops on the Korean Peninsula, projected this year that the number could be in excess of 50.

Something that occurred to me recently is that North Korea may be becoming more aggressive, and suicidal, because they have realized the current regime cannot remain in power and will inevitably collapse soon. So Kim Jong Un may envision going out with a bang, by becoming the banana public regime that nuked and crippled or destroyed the United States.

Alternately, that they see public support of Kim Jong Un diminishing, and are sabre-rattling to rally public support against the U.S./Japan/South Korea, to rebuild their support.

Just coincidence that it all escalated after Trump started talking tough?

North Korea has dismissed the official responsible for the Punggye-ri nuclear test site and executed him, Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported, citing unconfirmed reports from an unidentified North Korean defector.

Park In Young—the name's spelling may be subject to changes depending on the translation and transcriptions—was the chief of North Korea’s Bureau 131, a division of the ruling party’s Central Committee charged with the supervision of military facilities such as the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test facility and the Sohae Satellite Launching Station.

The motive for the alleged exceution remains unclear. Asahi’s report mentions two potential reasons. One could be a delay in the execution of North Korea’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date, which happened on September 3 but was originally planned for the spring and was postponed due to delays in a tunnel construction.


Another reason may be that Park was held responsible for the collapse of a tunnel that, according to the Asahi TV channel sources, occurred in October and caused the death of around 200 people—a report North Korea vehemently denied.

The Asahi Shimbun also previously reported that North Korean soldiers and their families were treated in a military hospital for radiation exposure following the September hydrogen bomb test at the facility.

The hydrogen bomb test provoked a 6.3 earthquake which, according to reports mentioned in South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, destroyed building facilities in a nearby village, including a school with more than 100 children in it as the regime gave no warning of the test.

Geologists have warned that a series of small-scale earthquakes recorded in the area following the September test indicate the facility may have become too unstable to conduct a new test without risking a massive collapse and radioactive leaks.

South Korean intelligence officers told lawmakers at a closed-door briefing in November a new nuclear test is unlikely, but it could nonetheless occur should Kim desire it, as one of the tunnels at the site seems ready for use.

News of Park’s alleged execution follow reports of punishment of North Korea’s second most powerful official after leader Kim Jong Un. General Hwang Pyong So of the General Political Bureau has vanished from public view, missing significant party meetings and celebrations, sparking speculation that he had been executed.

At the November briefing, South Korea’s intelligence agency said Hwang and his deputy were punished for “impure” attitudes. A lawmaker speaking to the press after the briefing said he could not comment on the details of the punishment because it was confidential information.

Last week South Korean publication Korea JoongAng Daily quoted an unidentified source saying that Hwang was purged from the party for taking bribes and his deputy was sent to a prison camp.