North Korea is Preparing for Nuclear War, Will Conduct Weekly Missile Launches

North Korea latest missile testfire may have failed spectacularly, but they’re promising more in the coming weeks and months.

North Korea will continue to test missiles, a senior official has told the BBC in Pyongyang, despite international condemnation and growing military tensions with the US.

“We’ll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis,” Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol told the BBC’s John Sudworth.

He said that an “all-out war” would result if the US took military action.

[…]

North Korea has accelerated its nuclear and missile tests in recent years, despite international condemnation and UN sanctions.

Its aim is to be able to put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach targets around the world, including the US.

US President Donald Trump has said that will not happen, and stepped up pressure on the isolated North.
He has sent a navy strike group towards the Korean Peninsula, and the US and South Korea are moving ahead with the early deployment of a controversial missile defence system.

Despite the tension, North Korea may carry out a sixth nuclear test soon, observers say. It test-fired a missile on Sunday that exploded within seconds of launch, following a grand military parade on Saturday.

Those tests, should they occur, will bring the two nations closer to an all-out nuclear war — something that North Korea appears willing to take on, according to reports.

A senior North Korean official said Monday the U.S. has created “a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any minute.”

Kim In Ryong, North Korea’s deputy United Nations ambassador, added that the Korean Peninsula is “the world’s biggest hot spot” due to American intrusions there.

“[North Korea] is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S.,” he said Monday in Panmunjom, North Korea, according to The Associated Press.

Whether these proposed launches will succeed is another story altogether. If their latest launch is any indication, the North Koreans are a long way away from matching the United States’ military might.

Source: BBC, The Hill