SEOUL — North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said on Saturday that the country’s second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test demonstrated the ability to strike any target in the United States in a direct challenge to US President Donald Trump who had issued dire warnings, including a preemptive nuclear strike, over the North Korean missile program.
Analysts said the missile appeared to have a range of at least 10,000 kilometers which would put the US mainland within reach.
Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago appeared to be well within range of the missile which may also be capable of hitting Boston and New York, said David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists on his blog.
China condemned the test but US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Beijing and Moscow bore “unique responsibility” for the growing threat from the reclusive North.
“Dear leader Kim Jong-un expressed great satisfaction with the perfectly successful test and praised its developers,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
Kim said it demonstrated the North’s ability to launch “at any place and time,” KCNA reported, adding “the leader said proudly the test also confirmed all the US mainland is within our striking range.”
Trump denounced the launch as “reckless and dangerous” and rejected Pyongyang’s claims that such tests helped ensure North Korean security.
Threatening the world
“By threatening the world, these weapons and tests further isolate North Korea, weaken its economy and deprive its people,” he said.
“The heads of the US and South Korean militaries discussed military response options after North Korea’s launch,” the Pentagon said.
A New York Times report said the US response was more concrete — it agreed to start talks with South Korea to build more powerful missiles to counter the North’s threat.
The report, quoting the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said Moon called for arms buildup in response to the latest ballistic missile test by the North.
Moon’s top national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, called his US counterpart, Gen. HR McMaster, early on Saturday to propose an immediate start to negotiations allowing South Korea to build up missile capabilities, the report said.
Seven hours later, according to the New York Times report, McMaster confirmed that Washington had accepted the proposal.
Treaty with US
South Korea wants to build missiles that could deliver more powerful payloads to targets in North Korea that included the location of its leadership and its missile and nuclear sites, most of which are hidden underground.
A key hurdle to the buildup was a treaty that the South signed with Washington in the 1970s that allowed South Korea to build missiles with a range of up to nearly 800 km but barred from equipping these with warhead tips weighing more than 500 kilograms.
In his statement, Trump said his administration would “take all necessary steps to ensure the security of the American homeland and protect our allies.”
South Korea and Japan convened meetings of their national security councils. The US and South Korean militaries began conducting a live-fire exercise using surface-to-surface missiles in response to the latest test, the US Army said.
In a standard response to the test, Beijing urged restraint by all sides.
North Korea’s unrelenting pursuit of its missile and nuclear programs poses a thorny policy challenge for Trump, who is at loggerheads with Beijing over how to handle Kim’s regime.
Trump has repeatedly urged China to rein in its recalcitrant neighbor but Beijing insisted dialogue was the only practical way forward.
Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University and an expert on the North’s nuclear weapons program, said Friday’s launch confirmed time was running out for Washington to find a way out of a pressing security crisis.
Focus like a laser
“Another North Korean test of what appears to be a missile that can reach the United States further emphasizes the need for the Trump administration to focus like a laser on this increasingly dangerous situation,” Wit said on the institute’s 38 North website.
US military and South Korean intelligence officials had in recent days warned that North Korea appeared to be prepping another missile test, likely of an ICBM.
The North’s ICBM test on July 4 triggered global alarm, with experts saying the missile had a theoretical range to reach Alaska.
There remain doubts about whether the North can miniaturize a nuclear weapon to fit a missile nose cone or if it had mastered the technology needed for the projectile to survive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
But since Kim came to power there has been a series of technical advances, including three nuclear tests and a string of missile launches.
In all, six sets of United Nations sanctions had been imposed on North Korea since it first tested an atomic device in 2006, but two resolutions adopted last year significantly toughened the sanctions. —Reports from Agence France-Presse and the New York Times News Service