Seoul, South Korea –
The United States and its Asian allies flew dozens of fighter jets over waters around the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday in a show of force as diplomats discussed a coordinated response to a possible upcoming North Korean nuclear test.
The flights came as US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman traveled to Seoul for discussions with South Korea and Japanese officials on the impending North Korean threat and warned of a “quick and strong” response if the North continues with a nuclear test that would be an explosion. the first in nearly five years.
If organized, the test could be another leap forward in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s goal of building an arsenal that could threaten US regional allies and the American homeland. This will escalate a pressure campaign aimed at forcing the United States to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength.
While the Biden administration has promised to push for additional international sanctions if North Korea conducts a nuclear test, the prospects for harsh sanctions are unclear due to disagreements among the permanent members of the UN Security Council.
“Any nuclear test would be in complete violation of UN Security Council resolutions. There will be a quick and strong response to such a test, “Sherman said after meeting with South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Cho Hyung-dong. “We continue to call on Pyongyang to stop its destabilizing and provocative activities and to choose the path of diplomacy.
Sherman and Cho are planning a tripartite meeting with Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Mori Takeo on Wednesday over North Korea’s nuclear issue.
Expanding joint demonstrations of military power, four US F-16 fighter jets flew in formation with 16 South Korean planes – including F-35A stealth fighters – over waters off the east coast of South Korea, an exercise aimed at demonstrating rapid response capabilities. North Korean provocations, said the Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea. The United States and Japan have conducted a separate exercise involving six planes – four Japanese F-15 fighters and two American F-16s – over waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.
The flights came a day after US and South Korean forces fired eight surface-to-surface missiles into South Korea’s eastern waters to match North Korea’s missile demonstration over the weekend, which fired the same number of weapons from multiple locations on Sunday. the biggest one-day test event.
North Korea has fired 18 missiles in 2022 alone – including its first intercontinental ballistic missile demonstrations in 2017 – using a favorable environment to promote weapons development, with the Security Council effectively paralyzed by Russia’s war against Ukraine. .
North Korea may soon raise the rate as US and South Korean officials say it is almost ready to detonate its nuclear test site in the northeastern city of Pongieri. His last such test and sixth overall was in September 2017, when he claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb destined for her ICBM.
Meanwhile, US Special Envoy for North Korea Sung Kim said on Tuesday that Washington and its allies were increasingly concerned not only about the unprecedented number of ballistic missile launches, but also that “senior North Korean officials have used rhetoric that could to suggest the use of tactical nuclear weapons “He did not give details.
After taking power in 2011, Kim has accelerated the development of nuclear weapons despite limited resources and has shown no desire to completely surrender an arsenal he considers his strongest guarantee of survival.
Experts say that with its next nuclear test, North Korea can claim its ability to build small bombs that can be placed on ICBMs with many warheads or placed on short-range missiles that can reach South Korea and Japan.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Monday that there were indications that one of the passages at the Pungi -ri test site had reopened, possibly in preparation for a nuclear test.
Hours before Sherman’s meeting in Seoul, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington that the United States believes North Korea may request its seventh test “in the coming days.”
The Biden administration’s criminal actions over North Korea’s recent weapons tests have been limited to largely symbolic unilateral sanctions. Russia and China have vetoed a US-sponsored Security Council resolution that would impose additional sanctions on North Korea over its previous ballistic tests on May 25.
“We have called on members of the international community, certainly members of the UN Security Council’s Permanent Five, to be responsible stakeholders in the UN Security Council as a leading forum for addressing threats to international peace and security,” Price said.
“Unilateral action will never be the most attractive or even the most effective response, and this is especially important because we are pleased to have close allies in the form of Japan and Korea,” he said, referring to South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.
North Korean state media have not yet commented on Sunday’s shooting. They came after US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan completed a three-day naval exercise with South Korea in the Philippine Sea on Saturday, apparently their first joint carrier exercise since November 2017 as countries move to modernize their defense exercises. growing threats from North Korea.
North Korea has long condemned Allied combined military exercises as invasion rehearsals and often opposes its own missile exercises, including the 2016 and 2017 launches, which simulate nuclear attacks on South Korean ports and US military facilities in Japan.
Nuclear talks between the United States and North Korea have stalled since 2019 over disagreements over easing crippling US-led sanctions in exchange for steps to disarm North Korea.
The Kim government has so far rejected proposals from the Biden administration to open talks and apparently intends to turn the dormant denuclearization talks into a reciprocal arms reduction process, experts say.
Kim’s campaign of pressure was not delayed by the outbreak of COVID-19, which spread to its largely unvaccinated population of 26 million amid a lack of public health tools. North Korea has so far rejected offers of US and South Korean aid, but there are indications that it has received at least some vaccines from ally China.
“We are looking for a dialogue with Pyongyang without preconditions,” US envoy Sung Kim told reporters during a conference call. He said North Korea “did not respond. Instead, we are witnessing a significant increase in the scope and scale of their ballistic missile tests.”
South Korean activist Park Sang-hak, a North Korean deserter who has been spreading anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border for years, said his group flew 20 balloons Tuesday carrying drugs, masks and vitamin pills to help civilians. North Korea.
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Associated Press writer Marie Yamaguchi of Tokyo contributed to the report
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