North Korea fired five short-range missiles during military training last week, a South Korean newspaper reported yesterday, as the top US general in the South warned that Pyongyang could conduct a second nuclear test.
The North fired the ground-to-air and air-to-air missiles, with ranges from 10km to 50km, as part of an annual training session, the Chosun Ilbo reported, citing an unidentified government official.
The report comes amid speculation that North Korea may be preparing to conduct a second nuclear test following its first one on Oct. 9.
US Army General B.B. Bell said at a news conference yesterday that a second test is possible, though he didn't cite any specific intelligence that another test was imminent.
"I can only surmise that since they tested one, we would see at some time in the future yet another test of a nuclear device," Bell said, adding that missiles and other weapons also could be tested.
"I think we can expect future tests as part of their program to develop these kinds of very provocative weapons," he said.
Bell was firm that the US and South Korean allied forces could deter aggression from the North and defeat any possible attack. Still, he called for a diplomatic solution to the standoff.
"I wish that North Korea would not only stop testing these devices, but stop making them and come back to the bargaining table," he said.
Bell also affirmed that the South remains under protection of the US "nuclear umbrella" -- an issue that drew harsh criticism yesterday from the North.
In a commentary in its main paper, the North said the US' nuclear weapons won't be able to protect the South but "will be a source of disaster and trouble bringing the holocaust of nuclear war."
"Those who are fond of fire are bound to be burned to death," the Rodong Sinmun wrote, according to an English-language dispatch from the North's official Korean Central News Agency. "If the US and South Korean war maniacs persist in nuclear war adventures, they can never evade the lot of destruction."
Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, dissident playwright turned Czech president Vaclav Havel and former Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik called for UN Security Council action on the North over its "egregious" human rights record.
The trio commissioned a 123-page report detailing the North's atrocities. In the report, the three said the dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear program should not eclipse its deadly political repression, and that the council should instead take on leader Kim Jong-il's regime over its treatment of its people.
The report says that Security Council action is warranted under a resolution unanimously approved in April that endorsed last year's agreement aimed at preventing tragedies like the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
"Nowhere else in the world today is there such an abuse of rights, as institutionalized as it is in North Korea," Bondevik said.
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