North Korea said on Wednesday it is considering
plans for a missile strike on the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, just hours
after President Donald Trump told the North that any threat to the United
States would be met with "fire and fury."
The sharp increase in tensions rattled financial
markets and prompted warnings from U.S. officials and analysts not to engage in
rhetorical slanging matches with North Korea.
Pyongyang said it was "carefully
examining" a plan to strike Guam, which is home to about 163,000 people
and a U.S. military base that includes a submarine squadron, an airbase and a
Coast Guard group.
A Korean People's Army spokesman said in a
statement carried by state-run KCNA news agency the plan would be put into
practice at any moment once leader Kim Jong Un makes a decision.
Guam Governor Eddie Calvo dismissed the North's
threat and said the island was prepared for "any eventuality" with
strategically placed defenses. He said he had been in touch with the White
House and there was no change in the threat level.
"Guam is American soil ... We are not just a
military installation," Calvo said in an online video message.
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| Beach filled tourist in Guam's Capital
North Korea also accused the United States of
devising a "preventive war" and said in another statement, citing a
different military spokesman, any plans to execute this would be met with an
"all-out war wiping out all the strongholds of enemies, including the U.S.
mainland."
Washington has warned it is ready to use force if
needed to stop North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear programs but that it
prefers global diplomatic action, including sanctions. The U.N. Security
Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Saturday.
Trump issued his strongest warning yet for North
Korea in comments to reporters in New Jersey on Tuesday.
"North Korea best not make any more threats to
the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never
seen," Trump said.
"BLACK SWAN EVENT"
North Korea has made no secret of its plans to
develop a nuclear-tipped missile able to strike the United States and has
ignored international calls to halt its nuclear and missile programs.
Pyongyang says its intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs) are a legitimate means of defense against perceived U.S. hostility,
including joint military drills with South Korea.
U.S. stocks closed slightly lower after Trump’s
comments, while a widely followed measure of stock market anxiety ended at its
highest in nearly a month.
The U.S. dollar index edged down and the safe-haven
yen strengthened against the U.S. currency after North Korea's response. Asia
stocks dipped, with South Korea's benchmark index down 0.9 percent and Japan's
Nikkei 1.6 percent weaker.
"Tensions will continue to mount and could
eventually develop into a black swan event that the markets are not prudently
considering," Steve Hanke, professor of Applied Economics at the Johns
Hopkins University, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum.
The United States has remained technically at war
with North Korea since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in an armistice rather
than a peace treaty.
Seoul is home to roughly 10 million people and
within range of massed North Korean rockets and artillery, which would be
impossible to destroy in a first U.S. strike.
Tens of thousands of U.S. troops remain stationed
in South Korea and in nearby Japan, the only country to have been attacked with
nuclear weapons. Wednesday marked the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of
the city of Nagasaki by the United States.
MILITARY DRILLS
Tensions in the region have risen since North Korea
carried out two nuclear bomb tests last year and two ICBM tests in July.
Japanese fighters conducted joint air drills with
U.S. supersonic bombers in Japanese skies close to the Korean peninsula on
Tuesday, Japan's Air Self Defence Force said.
On Monday, two U.S. B-1 bombers flew from Guam over
the Korean Peninsula as part of its "continuous bomber presence," a
U.S. official said, in a sign of Guam's strategic importance.
The island, popular with Japanese and South Korean
tourists, is protected by the advanced U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) anti-missile system recently installed in South Korea, the deployment
of which has angered China.
Madeleine Z. Bordallo, the U.S. Congresswoman for
Guam, said she was confident U.S. forces could protect it from the "deeply
troubling" North Korean nuclear threat. She called on Trump to show
"steady leadership" and work with the international community to
de-escalate tensions.
The alert status at Andersen Airforce Base on Guam
had not been changed by Wednesday morning, according to the duty officer at the
base's public affairs office.
The Guam Visitors Bureau’s branch in Tokyo said it
had not received any inquiries about the threat, and major South Korean tour
agencies reported no cancellations or inquiries either.
WAR OF WORDS
Republican U.S. Senator John McCain said Trump
should tread cautiously when issuing threats to North Korea unless he is
prepared to act.
"I take exception to the president’s comments
because you've got to be sure you can do what you say you’re going to do,"
he said in a radio interview.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that North
Korea had successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit
inside its missiles, according to a confidential U.S. intelligence assessment.
However, U.S. intelligence officials told Reuters
that, while North Korea has accelerated its efforts to design an ICBM, a
miniaturized nuclear warhead, and a nosecone robust enough to survive re-entry
through the Earth’s atmosphere, there is no reliable evidence that it has
mastered all three, much less tested and combined them into a weapon capable of
hitting targets in the United States.
North Korea's ICBM tests last month suggested it
was making technical progress, Japan's annual Defence White Paper warned.
A Japanese government source said Japan was not
asking for Trump to tone down his remarks, which were in line with his policy
of not letting the other side know what the United States might actually do,
based on its "all options are on the table" stance.
Former U.S. diplomat Douglas Paal, now with the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington, said Trump
should not get into a war of words with Pyongyang.
"It strikes me as an amateurish reflection of
a belief that we should give as we get rhetorically. That might be satisfying
at one level, but it takes us down into the mud that we should let Pyongyang
enjoy alone," said Paal, who served as a White House official under
previous Republican administrations.
News Source: - Reuters | August 09,
2017.
Photo Source: - AFP/Getty
Images | July 14, 2017; AP | April 13, 2017.
Map Source: - Bing
Maps
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