- Communication intercepts reveal plans to launch missile
- Missile components 'being moved to North Korean coast'
- Speculation launch is 'test' to mark North Korean holiday
- View interactive North Korean timeline at end of story
A NORTH Korean attack on the United States would be "suicidal", a former United States ambassador to the United Nations has declared.
Former diplomat Bill Richardson said there had been a lot of heated talk from all sides.
"There's been a lot of rhetoric and not a lot of action ... but I think our response has been appropriate: Cool, calm and at the same time putting our military resources ready in case there's an emergency," Mr Richardson said.
"But if they try anything with the United States, it's suicidal. That's not going to happen."
Richardson sparked controversy when he joined Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt in a visit to North Korea earlier this year.
He today once again emphasised the need for careful diplomacy.
Former UN ambassador Bill Richardson smiles as he responds to the media at Beijing International airport in Beijing on January 7, 2013, before his trip to North Korea.
The comments come as intercepted military communications indicate North Korea could be planning to launch a missile spotted being moved by train yesterday.
CNN has reported a United States official as saying the communications revealed the launch was planned for the coming days.
The US is reportedly seeking the location of a secret North Korean launch facility or hidden launch vehicles on the nation's east coast. The location is of particular concern as any launch would likely go over the coast of Japan.
The revelation comes after South Korean officials yesterday said a medium-range " had been spotted being loaded on to a train and transported towards the coast of the Sea of Japan.
A file photo, a North Korean vehicle carrying a Musudan missile passes by during a mass military parade in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square to celebrate the centenary of the birth of the late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.
The Yonhap news agency reported speculation that the missile may be "test fired" on April 15, the birthday of the nation's founder Kim Il-sung.
The range of the "Musudan" is unclear, but some analysts have placed it at up to 4000km - enough to reach bases in Japan and the United States controlled island of Guam.
South Korea's defense minister said that the missile was not capable of reaching the United States and that there are no signs that the North is preparing for a full-scale conflict.
North Korea has been railing against US-South Korean military exercises that began in March and are to continue until the end of this month. The allies insist the exercises in South Korea are routine, but the North calls them rehearsals for an invasion and says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself. The North has also expressed anger over tightened UN sanctions for its February nuclear test.
ANONYMOUS HACK JONG-UN PICTURE.
Analysts say the ominous warnings in recent weeks are probably efforts to provoke softer policies from South Korea, to win diplomatic talks with Washington and solidify the image of young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Many of the threats come in the middle of the night in Asia - daytime for the US audience.
The report of the movement of the missile came hours after North Korea's military warned that it had been granted approval to attack the US using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. The reference to smaller weapons could be a claim that North Korea has improved its nuclear technology, or a bluff.
The North is not believed to have mastered the technology needed to miniaturize nuclear bombs enough to mount them on long-range missiles. Nor has it demonstrated that those missiles, if it has them at all, are accurate. It also could be years before the country completes the laborious process of creating enough weaponized fuel to back up its nuclear threats.
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said he did not know the reasons behind the North's missile movement, and that it "could be for testing or drills."
GILLARD DECLARES SUPPORT FOR THE SOUTH.
A North Korean soldier watches the South Korean side at the border village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in South Korea.
AUSTRALIAN EVACUATION PLAN FOR KOREA.
He dismissed reports in Japanese media that the missile could be a KN-08, which is believed to be a long-range missile that if operable could hit the United States.
Kim told lawmakers at a parliamentary committee meeting that the missile has "considerable range" but not enough to hit the US mainland.
The Pentagon announced that it will hasten the deployment of a missile defense system to the US Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack.
Experts say North Korea has not shown that it has accurate long-range missiles. Some suspect that an apparent long-range missile unveiled by the North at a parade last year was actually a mockup.
Soldiers of the U.S. Army 23rd chemical battalion wear gas masks while attending a demonstration of their equipment during a ceremony to recognize the battalion's official return to the 2nd Infantry Division based in South Korea at Camp Stanley in Uijeongbu, north of Seoul.
"From what we know of its existing inventory, North Korea has short- and medium-range missiles that could complicate a situation on the Korean Peninsula (and perhaps reach Japan), but we have not seen any evidence that it has long-range missiles that could strike the continental US, Guam or Hawaii," James Hardy, Asia Pacific editor of IHS Jane's Defence Weekly, wrote in a recent analysis.
KIM'S CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER.
Kim, the South Korean defense minister, said that if North Korea were preparing for a full-scale conflict, there would be signs such as the mobilization of a number of units, including supply and rear troops, but South Korean military officials have found no such preparations.
"(North Korea's recent threats) are rhetorical threats. I believe the odds of a full-scale provocation are small," he said. But he added that North Korea might mount a small-scale provocation such as its 2010 shelling of a South Korean island, an attack that killed four people.
North Korean soldiers on the lookout at a watch tower in the North Korean town of Sinuiju. Picture: AP
At times, North Korea has gone beyond rhetoric.
On Tuesday, it announced it would restart a plutonium reactor it had shut down in 2007. A US research institute said Wednesday that satellite imagery shows that construction needed for the restart has already begun.
For a second day yesterday, North Korean border authorities denied entry to South Koreans who manage jointly run factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong. South Koreans already at the plant were being allowed to return home.
South Korea has prepared a military contingency plan should North Korea hold South Korean workers hostage in Kaesong, Defense Minister Kim said. He wouldn't elaborate.
NORTH KOREA'S MISSILE THREAT TO AUSTRALIA `REAL'.
South Korean soldiers patrol inside the barbed-wire fence near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea.
GALLERY: KOREAN TENSION INTENSIFIES.
Outraged over comments in the South about possible hostage-taking and a military response from Seoul, a North Korean government-run committee threatened to pull North Korean workers out of Kaesong as well.
In Monaco, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "very much disappointed and concerned" by the North's move to restrict access by South Korean personnel and goods into Kaesong's industrial complex and called for the measure to be lifted as soon as possible.
North Korea's military statement yesterday, from an unidentified spokesman from the General Bureau of the Korean People's Army, said its troops had been authorized to counter U.S. "aggression" with "powerful practical military counteractions," including nuclear weapons.
LOST IN TRANSLATION: NORTH KOREA'S TWEETS.
Soldiers of the U.S. Army 23rd chemical battalion, wearing anti-chemical suits check mock chemical pollutants on each other for a demonstration of their equipment during a ceremony to recognize the battalion's official return to the 2nd Infantry Division based in South Korea at Camp Stanley in Uijeongbu, north of Seoul.
MOST EXCELLENT PICTURES OF KIM JONG-UN.
It said America's "hostile policy" and "nuclear threat" against North Korea "will be smashed by the strong will of all the united service personnel and people and cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means."
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Washington is doing all it can to defuse the situation.
"Some of the actions they've taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat" to the US and its allies, Hagel said Wednesday.
White House spokesman Jay Carney has called on Russia and China, two countries he said have influence on North Korea, to use that influence to persuade the North to change course.
A US Air Force F-22 Raptor. Two of these stealth fighters have been stationed in South Korea.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich has criticised a move by the North Korean parliament this week to declare the country in effect a nuclear weapons state.
"It's categorically unacceptable to see such defiant neglect by Pyongyang of UN Security Council resolutions and fundamental regulations in the area of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," he said.
South Korea's Defense Ministry said its military is ready to deal with any provocation by North Korea. "I can say we have no problem in crisis management," deputy ministry spokesman Wee Yong-sub told reporters.
The 11-day US-South Korean joint military drills in March involved 10,000 South Korean and about 3000 US troops, incorporating fighter jets and nuclear-capable stealth bombers. Those coincided with two months of separate US-South Korean field exercises that began March 1.
On Sunday, Kim Jong Un led a high-level meeting of party officials who declared building the economy and "nuclear armed forces" as the nation's priorities.
North Korea is believed to be working toward building an atomic bomb small enough to mount on a long-range missile. Long-range rocket launches designed to send satellites into space in 2009 and 2012 were widely considered covert tests of missile technology, and North Korea has conducted three underground nuclear tests.
"I don't believe North Korea has the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear weapons mounted on missiles, and won't for many years. Its ability to target and strike South Korea is also very limited," nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said this week.
In comments posted on CISAC's website, Hecker said North Korea knows a nuclear attack would be met with "a devastating nuclear response."
Hecker has estimated that North Korea has enough plutonium to make several crude nuclear bombs. Its announcement Tuesday that it would restart a plutonium reactor indicated that it intends to produce more nuclear weapons material.
The US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies has examined recent commercial satellite imagery of the Nyongbyon nuclear facility, where the reactor was shut down in 2007 under the terms of a disarmament agreement. A cooling tower for the reactor was destroyed in 2008.
The analysis published on the institute's website, 38 North, says that rebuilding the tower would take six months, but a March 27 photo shows building work may have started for an alternative cooling system that could take just weeks. Experts estimate it could take three months to a year to restart the plant.
- With AP
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