US President Joe Biden on Thursday warned North Korea that the US would “respond accordingly” if it escalates its military testing, after Pyongyang fired two missiles in its first major provocation since he took office.
The nuclear-armed North has a long history of using weapons tests to ramp up tensions to try to forward its objectives.
Biden’s response demonstrates a change of tone from his predecessor, Donald Trump, who engaged in an extraordinary diplomatic “bromance” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and repeatedly played down similar short-range missile launches.
Photo: AFP
Pyongyang had been biding its time since the new US administration took office, not even officially acknowledging its existence until last week.
However, the North on Thursday launched two weapons from its east coast into the Sea of Japan.
It was a violation of UN resolutions and the US was “consulting with our partners and allies,” Biden said, warning North Korea that “there will be responses if they choose to escalate. We will respond accordingly.”
“I’m also prepared for some form of diplomacy, but it has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization,” he told reporters.
Washington and Tokyo said that the North had fired ballistic missiles, which it is banned from developing under UN Security Council resolutions that have imposed multiple sanctions on the isolated country.
Pyongyang yesterday insisted that the test involved a “tactical guided projectile” with a solid-fuel engine, with its official Korean Central News Agency saying that it was supervised by Korean Workers’ Party Central Military Commission Vice President Ri Pyong-chol, rather than by Kim.
The weapons hit a target 600km away, the news agency said — further than the 450km reported by the South Korean military — and could carry a payload of 2.5 tonnes.
Vipin Narang, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that it appeared to be a weapon that the North displayed at a military parade in January.
“A 2.5 ton warhead likely settles the question whether this KN23 variant is nuclear capable. It is,” he wrote on Twitter.
Rebukes also poured in from Germany, France and the UK, which each condemned the tests as violations of UN resolutions.
At Washington’s request, the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea met yesterday, a diplomatic sources said, although no public statement is expected.
Pyongyang has made rapid progress in its capabilities under Kim, testing missiles capable of reaching the continental US.
Pyongyang was “slowly going up that spectrum, that ladder of the inflammatory nature of provocation,” said Frank Aum, a North Korea expert at the US Institute of Peace, to see how the Biden administration responded.
Thursday’s launch, and an earlier missiles test, came after a visit to the region by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, when Blinken repeatedly stressed the importance of denuclearizing North Korea.
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