North Korea has frequently warned that a full-scale conflict is about to break out on the Korean Peninsula – and with belligerent comments coming from both Pyongyang and Washington DC in recent weeks, that possibility may be inching closer.
N orth Korea has frequently warned that a full-scale conflict is about to break out on the Korean Peninsula – and with belligerent comments coming from both Pyongyang and Washington DC in recent weeks, that possibility may be inching closer.
What was previously dismissed as wild rhetoric, the nightmare scenario become significantly more likely after North Korea carried out two test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles in June.
The crisis deepened with Pyongyang reacting to the latest sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council by threatening to subject the US mainland to “an unimaginable sea of fire”.
In response, US President Donald Trump warned in a televised address that North Korea would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” after a US intelligence assessment concluded that Pyongyang has been able to miniaturise a nuclear warhead to fit atop an ICBM.
I gnoring Mr Trump’s threats, North Korea fired a missile over Japan, on August 29 prompting the country’s warning system to kick in, in a significant escalation of Kim Jong-un’s military posturing.
L ess than a week later, North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, which it said was of an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile, prompting the threat of a “massive” military response from the United States if it or its allies were threatened.
E scalating tensions further, North Korea fired another intermediate range ballistic missile over Japan in September. After Mr Trump warned Kim Jong-un “won’t be around much longer”, North Korea’s said that was a “declaration of war” and that they had the right to shoot down US military jets.
North Korean ballistic missiles have sufficient range to cover the 2,100 miles to Guam, although there are still questions about their accuracy and whether nuclear-armed missiles are able survive re-entry.
Pyongyang would be keen to target Guam as its military air and naval facilities make it a key element in any US operations against North Korea, including resupplying ground forces on the Korean Peninsula in the event of a conflict breaking out.
Despite Pyongyang’s claims, analysts believe that an unprovoked attack on Guam is “extremely unlikely” because of the inevitable response from Washington.
“If the North launched any sort of attack against Guam, that would be a red line crossed and would be considered by the US to be an act of war,” said Garren Mulloy an associate professor of international relations at Japan’s Daito Bunka University.
“If they launched ballistic missiles – and especially if they used nuclear weapons – then I imagine the US would reply with targeted nuclear strikes against the North’s nuclear facilities or such a vast conventional strike that it would have the same result”, he said.
A nalysts have devised a number of scenarios of how tensions might develop into a conflict that would devastate the peninsula and, potentially, neighbouring countries such as Japan.
