North Korean leader Kim Jong Un‘s regime has made “preparations for a nuclear test,” according to a senior State Department official, that could inaugurate a renewed phase of saber rattling rendered more dangerous by the regime’s upgrades to its nuclear arsenal.
“We know that the North Koreans have done preparations for a nuclear test,” the State Department’s special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, told reporters Tuesday. “We will be obviously vigilant, and we will be in close touch with our allies and partners to be able to respond very quickly, very swiftly should the North Koreans proceed with the nuclear test.”
That test would put a nuclear exclamation point on an “unprecedented” flurry of ballistic missile launches by the rogue regime. North Korea launched eight short-range ballistic missiles Sunday, pushing its total number of launches this year to an annual record high in an apparent effort to demonstrate the modernization of its tactical nuclear weapon delivery systems in advance of a test.
“It’s kind of the next generation or the next iteration of tactical nukes rather than something totally new,” Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Bruce Klingner, a former chief of the CIA’s Korea branch, told the Washington Examiner. “I think North Korea, when they [test] a nuke, it could either be a big one, like they did in 2017, or it could be a small one demonstrating that ‘hey, this new generation of tactical nukes works.’”
NORTH KOREA HEADS UP UN DISARMAMENT FORUM WEEK AFTER MULTIPLE MISSILE TESTS
The missile launches last week provoked a symmetrical response from South Korea and the United States, with seven of the eight missiles launched by the South Koreans. The allies also sent a combined force of fighter jets over the Yellow Sea, between the Korean Peninsula and China. As in the case of the missile launches, the South Koreans provided the bulk of the military assets on display — the U.S. sortied just four F-16 Fighting Falcons alongside 16 South Korean warplanes.
“Any nuclear tests would be in complete violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea’s capital. “There would be a swift and forceful response to such a test.”
That response would seem likely to be a function of U.S. and allied operations rather than the imposition of new sanctions at the U.N. Security Council. China and Russia both voted last week to veto a proposal from the U.S. to punish North Korea’s recent launches with a new round of international sanctions.
“It’s hard for me to imagine that Beijing would actually want North Korea to continue to provoke, violate multiple Security Council resolutions and destabilize the region,” Kim said. “So we hope that China will be more forthcoming in working with us to deal with the situation on the peninsula.”
North Korea’s missile launches and nuclear tests could disrupt a standoff that has been fairly static in the years since the collapse of talks between the Kim regime and the Trump administration. President Joe Biden’s predecessor canceled joint military exercises with South Korea as an olive branch to the young dictator, and his progressive South Korean counterpart favored a dovish approach to Pyongyang. Yet newly elected conservative South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol declared his predecessor’s approach “a failure” and implied that no more such overtures will be forthcoming from Seoul.
“I think the ball is in Chairman Kim’s court — it is his choice to start a dialogue with us,” Yoon told CNN last week.
The North Korean missile launches could be a sign that both sides plan to harden their diplomatic positions.
“As [the North Koreans] continue to develop these capabilities, you know, it could either be [they could intend to] go down the coercive diplomacy path, or it could be: ‘Now that we’ve sort of completed our to-do list, now maybe we’ll come back to talk, willing to cap our arsenal but not ever give it up,” Klingner said. “I think either of those is likelier than [the Kim regime deciding]: ‘We’re going to start a war.’”
In any case, it remains likely that a new phase of overt saber rattling between the two sides is looming on the horizon, said Klingner, who said he met with senior South Korean officials in Seoul last week.
“We know they’re going to go back to the pre-2018 levels of military exercises,” Klingner said. “I met the vice minister of defense and others last week. … Right now, it’s kind of a question, like … do we make that announcement today? Or if we think they’re going to do a test in a couple days, why not announce it afterwards, and then we kind of get credit for a strong response?”
Kim, the U.S. envoy, emphasized that the Biden team remains “willing to address issues of concern to them” but put the burden of starting those talks on North Korea.
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“We’re willing to take a more comprehensive, more flexible, and more open-minded approach to diplomacy if and when the DPRK shows interest in finding a diplomatic path forward,” he said. “And then at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, we are going to continue to work on making sure that our deterrent capabilities, together with our allies ROK and Japan, are what it needs to be to deal with all contingencies on the peninsula.”
