As Secretary of State John F. Kerry prepares to travel to Korea next week, the United States can use White House back channels to talk to Kim Jong-un — but all efforts to pressure Mr. Kim into better behavior will fail if the United States caves and grants formal talks (“‘Reckless’ Kim Jong-un won’t be tolerated; Kerry strikes back at North Korean threats,” Web, Tuesday).
The current North Korean crisis has yet to play out. The regime could yet launch multiple medium-range missiles and conduct another nuclear-weapon test. However, naysayers already are concluding that a recent U.S. military demonstration of resolve was “provocative,” and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test has been postponed.
North Korea on Tuesday issued a stark warning to tourists and to foreign companies in the South: Get out. Go home.
Leaders here and in Washington offered cautionary responses Tuesday to North Korea’s latest threat that “thermonuclear war” is imminent, as Japan announced deployment of ballistic-missile interceptors to key locations around Tokyo in preparation for a possible test or attack launch by Pyongyang.
The top U.S. military officer in the Asia Pacific region said Tuesday there is a growing sense in South Korea that “it would almost impossible for the South Koreans not to respond in some fashion” if North Korea were to sink one of their ships or shell an island, as the communist state did in 2010.
The "umbrella" of the U.S. nuclear deterrent and missile defense remains firmly in place over America's allies in Asia in the face of recent threats from North Korea, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said Monday.
On Sunday, June 25, 1950, the Korean People's Army attacked across the 38th parallel, captured Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea, and began driving south. The battered South Korean army and their U.S. military advisers quickly were pushed into the "Pusan Perimeter" on the southern tip of the peninsula - and U.S. President Harry Truman took the case to the United Nations Security Council.
China’s military and defense ministry on Sunday confirmed that military forces in a border region near North Korea conducted live-fire drills amid tensions between North Korea and the United States.
Residents in South Korea's capital have adopted a nonchalant, if not defiant, attitude about the barrage of threats from the North, even as the U.S. and the South plan a forceful but limited military response to any attack from North Korea.
