The nation put on a military spectacle to celebrate its founder’s birthday, in a defiant show of force to the world.<\/b>
TOKYO \u2013 North Korea put on a huge military spectacle Saturday to celebrate its founder\u2019s birthday, parading its series of new and technologically advanced missiles in front of Kim Jong Un, and in a defiant show of force in front of the world.
North Korea did not, however, carry out another nuclear test or ballistic missile launch, against widespread speculation that it would seek to celebrate Kim Il Sung\u2019s 105th birthday with a bang.
April 15 is the most important day in the North Korean calendar, and Kim Jong Un has celebrated his grandfather\u2019s birthday with great fanfare as a way to boost his own legitimacy as the successor to the communist dynasty.
North Korea presented two of its newest missiles at the parade in Kim Il Sung Square on Saturday, including the submarine-launched ballistic missile it successfully fired last year and the land-based version it launched last month.
\u201cAnd there were a lot of them,\u201d said Melissa Hanham, an expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California.
\u201cThe signal that they\u2019re trying to send is that they are moving ahead with solid-fuel missiles,\u201d she said.
North Korea has been working on solid fuel, which means missiles are ready to fire and don\u2019t need loading with propellant like its previous liquid-fuel missiles, as a way to fire missiles quickly and without detection by satellites.
It did not show off the KN-08 and KN-11 intercontinental ballistic missiles it had included in previous parades, the long-range rockets with the technical ability to reach the mainland United States that it is developing. But it instead put fuel canisters on the trucks that had carried the ICBMs previously, suggesting they wanted to reinforce the message that it can not fuel these longer-range missiles.
The parade took place amid stern warnings from the outside world, and mounting fears about some kind of military action in the region.
The United States has sent an aircraft carrier strike group to the Korean Peninsula region , and Trump has repeatedly tweeted that if China will not use its leverage to rein in North Korea, the United States will act.
Vice President Mike Pence arrives in Seoul on Sunday on the first leg of an Asia tour, and he will doubtless underscore Washington\u2019s strong alliances with South Korea and Japan and their determination to stop North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program.
China on Friday urged the United States and North Korea not to push their recriminations to a point of no return and allow war to break out on the Korean Peninsula.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said \u201cstorm clouds\u201d were gathering, an apparent reference to North Korean preparations to conduct a new nuclear test and the United States\u2019 deployment of a naval strike force to the waters off the peninsula. In addition, the U. S. military has been conducting large-scale exercises with South Korean forces, drills that the North considers provocative.
\u201cThe United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent,\u201d Wang said at a news conference after meeting with visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, Xinhua reported. \u201cWe urge all parties to refrain from inflammatory or threatening statements or deeds to prevent irreversible damage to the situation on the Korean Peninsula.\u201d
Later Friday, Wang called his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and said it was in both countries\u2019 interests to stop war breaking out. \u201cChina welcomes close collaboration with Russia to cool down the Korean Peninsula situation as quickly as possible and encourage the involved parties to resume dialogue,\u201d he said, according to China\u2019s foreign ministry.
Separately, China\u2019s Global Times newspaper said the U. S. decision to drop \u201cthe mother of all bombs\u201d on Afghanistan this week would have sent a \u201cshock wave\u201d all the way to North Korea but might send the wrong signal to Kim Jong Un \u2013 that without nuclear weapons he would suffer the same fate as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Libya\u2019s Muammar Gaddafi.
\u201cIt would be nice if the bomb could frighten Pyongyang but its actual impact may just be the opposite,\u201d the paper said.
Trump administration officials describe the situation as more dangerous than in the past, because of the progress North Korea has made in its nuclear and missile programs and because of the hostility on both sides. But U. S. officials said no decision has been made about how to respond to any new test \u2013 nuclear or ballistic \u2013 by North Korea.
While officials do not rule out other actions, they also stress their desire to ensure that the situation does not escalate out of control. Pentagon officials denied recent media reports that the Trump administration is ready to launch a preemptive strike if North Korea appears to be about to conduct a nuclear test.
North Korea Friday accused President Donald Trump of \u201cmaking trouble\u201d with his \u201caggressive\u201d tweets, amid concerns that tensions between the two countries could escalate into military action.
North Korea\u2019s vice foreign minister said that Trump was \u201cbecoming more vicious and more aggressive\u201d than previous presidents, which was only making matters worse.
\u201cTrump is always making provocations with his aggressive words,\u201d Han Song Ryol told the Associated Press in an interview in Pyongyang. \u201cSo that\u2019s why. It\u2019s not the DPRK but the U. S. and Trump that makes trouble,\u201d he said, using the abbreviation for the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea, as North Korea is officially known.
Han also repeated the regime\u2019s common refrain that North Korea is ready to act to defend itself.
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a powerful nuclear deterrent already in our hands, and we certainly will not keep our arms crossed in the face of a U. S. preemptive strike,\u201d Han told the AP.
His message chimed with a statement Friday from North Korea\u2019s Institute for Disarmament and Peace that it was the United States pushing the Korean Peninsula, \u201cthe world\u2019s biggest hotspot,\u201d to the brink of war by bringing back a naval strike group.
\u201cThis has created a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out any moment on the peninsula and pose a serious threat to the world\u2019s peace and security,\u201d the statement said.
North Korea has a habit of fueling tensions to increase the rewards it might extract from the outside world if it desists. Previously, the North has agreed to return to denuclearization talks in return for aid or the easing of sanctions.
The North Korean army meanwhile threatened to annihilate U. S. military bases in South Korea and the presidential palace in Seoul in response to what it called Trump\u2019s \u201cmaniacal military provocations.\u201d
With his approach, Trump is tearing up the old playbook of how to deal with North Korea, analysts said.
\u201cThis approach to North Korea is relatively new,\u201d said James Kim of the Asan Institute of Policy Studies in Seoul. \u201cThe approach in the past has been very calculated.\u201d
That has gone out the window with talk about military options, he said. \u201cWe always knew all these options were there, but no one was bold enough to go down that path. It\u2019s a new approach.\u201d
Some in Beijing are noticing the shift, too.
\u201cIt should be noted that there is a personality difference between Trump and Obama,\u201d the Global Times newspaper wrote Friday. The paper does not speak for the Chinese government on policy but often reflects a strain of thinking within the Communist Party.
\u201cTrump is also willing to show he is different. Bombing Syria helps him to show that,\u201d it continued, while noting that he was far from \u201crevolutionary\u201d because he dispatched only missiles, not troops.
But North Korea could prove different if it ignores Trump\u2019s warning and conducts another nuclear test, the paper said. \u201cTrump just took the office; if he loses to Pyongyang, he would feel like he had lost some prestige.\u201d
Right now, Trump has some cards to play, said Kim of the Asan Institute.
\u201cHe might say: \u2018If you want one less battleship in the region, what are you going to give me?’\u201d he said \u2013 a reversal of the usual situation, in which North Korea asks what it can get from its adversaries in return for changing its behavior.
Trump\u2019s tweets and his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping seem designed to push Beijing to crack down on North Korea, and there have been some indications that China is getting tougher on its errant neighbor.
China suspended coal imports from North Korea in mid-February \u2013 potentially cutting off an economic lifeline \u2013 and Chinese customs data released Thursday showed a 52 percent drop in imports in the first three months of this year, compared with the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the Japanese government is taking precautions of its own.
Its National Security Council has discussed how to evacuate the roughly 60,000 Japanese nationals living in South Korea and how to deal with a potential influx of North Koreans, according to multiple local reports. These plans include sifting out spies or soldiers who might be among the refugees.
The North Korean situation is getting more serious, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday. \u201cWe cannot turn away from this reality. The security environment surrounding Japan is getting tougher.\u201d
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