U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a stark warning to North Korea on Friday not to test-fire a mid-range missile, while tamping down anxiety caused by a new U.S. intelligence report suggesting significant progress in the communist regime’s nuclear weapons program.
Kicking off four days of talks in an East Asia beset by increasing North Korean threats, Kerry told reporters in Seoul that Pyongyang and its enigmatic young leader would only increase their isolation if they launched the missile that American officials believe has a range of some 2,500 miles — or enough to reach the U.S. territory of Guam.
“If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it’s across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community,” Kerry told reporters. “And it will be a provocation and unwanted act that will raise people’s temperatures.”
A senior defense official said the U.S. sees a “strong likelihood” that North Korea will launch a test missile in the coming days in defiance of international calls for restraint. The effort is expected to test the North’s ballistic missile technologies, not a nuclear weapon, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
Unless the missile unexpectedly heads for a U.S. or allied target, the Pentagon does not plan to try to shoot it down, several officials said. As a precaution, the U.S. has arrayed in the Pacific a number of Navy missile-defense ships, tracking radars and other elements of its worldwide network for shooting down hostile missiles.
Kerry said any missile test would be a “huge mistake” for Kim.
“It will further isolate his country and further isolate his people who are desperate for food and not missile launches,” he warned. “They are desperate for opportunity and not for a leader to flex his muscles.”
Kerry’s diplomatic tour, while planned long in advance, is unusual in that it brings him directly to a region of escalated tensions and precisely at a time when North Korea is threatening action. The North often mobilizes its military and nuclear tests to generate maximum attention, and Kerry’s presence on the peninsula alone risked spurring Pyongyang into another provocation. Another key date is the 101st birthday of the nation’s founder, Kim Il Sung, on Sunday.
After meeting South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Kerry also weighed in on an Defense Intelligence Agency report that rocked Washington on Thursday, suggesting that North Korea now had the capability to arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead — even if the weapons would lack reliability.
Kerry, repeating assertions by other administration officials, noted that Pyongyang still hadn’t developed or fully tested the technology needed for such a step, a message also delivered by the Pentagon and by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence and a former head of the DIA..
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., surprised a hearing on the defense budget Thursday when he read aloud one paragraph of the otherwise classified DIA report. The assessment said the Pentagon’s intelligence wing has “moderate confidence” that North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles but that the weapon was unreliable.
The disclosure took even Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by surprise and he refused to discuss it at the budget hearing. While analysts have made similar statements over the last two years, the reading of it at the same time Kim was renewing threats against the U.S. and its allies gave the notion new urgency.
The DIA disclosure spawned a partisan split in Washington over its significance and meaning. A Republican House member with access to classified intelligence said the analysis was in line with a view generally held by other U.S. intelligence agencies, whereas a senior Obama administration official said the central DIA assertion is not shared by many government analysts. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence.
Thomas Fingar, a former deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, said the DIA report reflects the fact that the military plans against worse cases, “so you’re prepared for anything less than that.”
Fingar, now a Stanford University professor, added, “That’s different than judgments about what’s ‘most likely.’ It gets into the subject of ‘Is it conceivable?’ “
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