Alarming warning from North Korean diplomat as nuclear tensions rise

PANMUNJOM, South Korea (NEWS 1130) — There has been an alarming warning from a North Korean diplomat today at the United Nations amid a nuclear standoff with the US.

Moments after US President Donald Trump warned North Korea to “behave,” North Korea’s UN Ambassador Kim In Ryong accused the US of acting like a gangster and bluntly threatened war. “It has been created dangerous situation in which the thermonuclear war may break out at any moment on the peninsula.”

North Korea test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile that blew up almost immediately. American warships have been sent to the Korean peninsula, while China pushes for negotiations

The comments follow a trip by US Vice President Mike Pence who traveled to the tense zone dividing North and South Korea and warned Pyongyang that after years of testing the US and South Korea with its nuclear ambitions, “the era of strategic patience is over.”

Pence made an unannounced visit to the Demilitarized Zone today at the start of his 10-day trip to Asia in a US show of force that allowed the vice president to gaze at North Korean soldiers from afar and stare directly across a border marked by razor wire. As the brown bomber jacket-clad vice president was briefed near the military demarcation line, two North Korean soldiers watched from a short distance away, one taking multiple photographs of the American visitor.

Pence told reporters near the DMZ that US President Donald Trump was hopeful China would use its “extraordinary levers” to pressure the North to abandon its weapons program, a day after the North’s failed missile test launch. But Pence expressed impatience with the unwillingness of the regime to move toward ridding itself of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

“But the era of strategic patience is over,” he declared. “President Trump has made it clear that the patience of the United States and our allies in this region has run out and we want to see change. We want to see North Korea abandon its reckless path of the development of nuclear weapons, and also its continual use and testing of ballistic missiles is unacceptable.”

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking to reporters Monday evening, said he hopes the United States “there will be no unilateral actions like those we saw recently in Syria and that the US will follow the line that President Trump repeatedly voiced during the election campaign.”

Meanwhile, China made a plea for a return to negotiations. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said tensions need to be eased on the Korean Peninsula to bring the escalating dispute there to a peaceful resolution. Lu said Beijing wants to resume the multi-party negotiations that ended in stalemate in 2009 and suggested that US plans to deploy a missile defense system in South Korea were damaging its relations with China.

In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, speaking to a parliamentary session today, said: “Needless to say, diplomatic effort is important to maintain peace. But dialogue for the sake of having dialogue is meaningless. We need to apply pressure on North Korea so they seriously respond to a dialogue” with the international community, he said, urging China and Russia to play more constructive roles on the issue.

Later on, Pence reiterated in a joint statement alongside South Korean Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn that “all options are on the table” to deal with threat and said any use of nuclear weapons by Pyongyang would be met with “an overwhelming and effective response.” He said the American commitment to South Korea is “iron-clad and immutable.”

Pointing to Trump’s recent military actions in Syria and Afghanistan, Pence said, “North Korea would do well not to test his resolve,” or the US armed forces in the region.

The vice president earlier visited a military installation near the DMZ, Camp Bonifas, for a briefing with military leaders at the joint US-South Korean installation, which is just outside the 4.02-kilometer-wide DMZ. Under rainfall, Pence later stood a few meters from the military demarcation line outside Freedom House, gazing at the North Korean soldiers across the border, and then peered at a deforested stretch of North Korea from a lookout post in the hillside.

On social media over the weekend, Trump wrote China was working with the United States on “the North Korea problem.” His national security adviser, HR McMaster, said the US would rely on its allies as well as Chinese leadership to resolve the issues with North Korea.

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