North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, ordered rocket units are enlisted for a possible attack on U.S. military bases located in South Korea and the Pacific, which could occur at any time, as announced by the country's official agency , KCNA.
This was announced at an emergency meeting in the early hours of Friday, which took place after the flight of two stealth bombers in south Korea.
In a KCNA cable ensures that the leader signed the order addressed to the senior generals, saying: "The moment of reckoning with the U.S. imperialists has come."
U.S. to N. Korea: Dial it down
North Korea readying rockets to aim
at U.S. targets, state media says
(CNN) -- North Korea's leader has approved a plan to prepare rockets to be on standby for firing at U.S. targets, including the U.S. mainland and military bases in the Pacific and in South Korea, state media reported.
In a meeting with military leaders early Friday, Kim Jong Un "said he has judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation," the state-run KCNA news agency reported.
"If they make a reckless provocation with huge strategic forces, [we] should mercilessly strike the U.S. mainland, their stronghold, their military bases in the operational theaters in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in South Korea," KCNA reported.
Kim's regime has unleashed a torrent of threats in the past few weeks, and U.S. officials have said they're concerned about the recent rhetoric.
"North Korea is not a paper tiger, so it wouldn't be smart to dismiss its provocative behavior as pure bluster," a U.S. official said Wednesday.
But Pentagon spokesman George Little said Thursday that it was important to remain calm and urged North Korea to "dial the temperature down."
"No one wants there to be war on the Korean Peninsula, let me make that very clear," he told CNN's "Erin Burnett Outfront."
Behind North Korea's heated words about missile strikes, one analyst said, there might not be much mettle.
"The fact is that despite the bombast, and unless there has been a miraculous turnaround among North Korea's strategic forces, there is little to no chance that it could successfully land a missile on Guam, Hawaii or anywhere else outside the Korean Peninsula that U.S. forces may be stationed," James Hardy, Asia-Pacific editor of IHS Jane's Defense Weekly, wrote in an opinion column published Thursday on CNN.com.
North Korea's latest threat Friday morning came after the United States said Thursday that it flew stealth bombers over South Korea in annual military exercises.
The mission by the B-2 Spirit bombers, which can carry conventional and nuclear weapons, "demonstrates the United States' ability to conduct long-range, precision strikes quickly and at will," a statement from U.S. Forces Korea said.
The North Korean state news agency described the mission as "an ultimatum that they (the United States) will ignite a nuclear war at any cost on the Korean Peninsula."
The North has repeatedly claimed that the exercises are tantamount to threats of nuclear war against it.
But the U.S. military stressed that the bombers flew in exercises to preserve peace in the region.
"The United States is steadfast in its alliance commitment to the defense of the Republic of Korea, to deterring aggression, and to ensuring peace and stability in the region," the statement from U.S. Forces Korea said, using South Korea's official name. "The B-2 bomber is an important element of America's enduring and robust extended deterrence capability in the Asia-Pacific region."
The disclosure of the B-2 flights comes a day after North Korea said it was cutting a key military hotline with South Korea, provoking fresh expressions of concern from U.S. officials about Pyongyang's recent rhetoric.
Tensions escalated on the Korean Peninsula after the North carried out a long-range rocket launch in December and an underground nuclear test last month, prompting the U.N. Security Council to step up sanctions on the secretive regime.
Pyongyang has expressed fury over the sanctions and the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises, due to continue until the end of April.
Sharp increases in tensions on the Korean Peninsula have taken place during the drills in previous years. The last time the North cut off military communications with the South was during similar exercises in March 2009.
North Korea has gone through cycles of "provocative behavior" for decades, Little said Thursday.
"And we have to deal with them. We have to be sober, calm, cool, collected about these periods. That's what we're doing right now," he said. "And we are assuring our South Korean allies day to day that we stand with them in the face of these provocations."
The recent saber-rattling from Pyongyang has included threats of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea, as well as the declaration that the armistice that stopped the Korean War in 1953 is null and void.
On Tuesday, the North said it planned to place military units tasked with targeting U.S. bases under combat-ready status.
Most observers say North Korea is still years away from having the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead on a missile, but it does have plenty of conventional military firepower, including medium-range ballistic missiles that can carry high explosives for hundreds of miles.
Little said Thursday that the United States was keeping a close eye on North Korea's missile capabilities.
"The important thing is for us to stay out ahead of what we think the North Korean threat is, especially from their missile program," he said. "They've been testing more missiles, and they've been growing their capabilities and we have to stay out ahead."
Korean nightmare: Experts ponder potential conflict
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects drills by the Korean People's Army (KPA) Navy at an undisclosed location on North Korea's east coast in a photo from the state-run Korean Central News Agency taken on March 25, 2013.
Editor's note: Andrew Salmon is a South Korea-based freelance journalist and author who has written two books on the Korean war. Below, he envisages a hypothetical, worst-case scenario of potential conflict on the Korean peninsula. CNN is not suggesting that war is imminent or even likely, but the possibility of conflict is one scenario that military strategists must consider given recent heightened tensions.
With Korea lying at the
heart of Northeast Asia, the world's third largest zone of economic
activity after Western Europe and North America, experts say global
capital markets would suffer devastating collateral damage, but the
catastrophic loss of human life -- and potential nuclear fallout --
would be far, far worse.
Kim makes his way to an observation post with North Korean soldiers on March 25.
Fortunately, no analysts
believe "Korean War II" is imminent; the armistice ending the 1950-53
conflict that buried millions continues to hold, despite North Korea's
nullification in March. And with regime maintenance Pyongyang's
paramount policy, few think it would risk an attack.
But Kim Jong Un's experience and rationality is being questioned following
his recent missile and nuclear tests, his annulment of the armistice
and his bellicose vitriol -- extreme even by Pyongyang standards.
Despite annulling the
armistice, a consistent Pyongyang demand has been a full peace treaty
and it also wants direct talks with the United States, which Washington
has resisted, preferring instead multilateral discussions.
Agreement with U.S.
Now, North Korea's
actions are fueling concern; so much so that South Korea and the U.S.
recently announced they had signed an agreement to firm up contingency
plans should North Korea follow through on its threats.
It follows joint military exercises between the allies, which included flights by U.S. B-52 bombers over South Korea.
At the time, Pentagon
spokesman George Little said the flights were to ensure the combined
forces were "battle-trained and trained to employ air power to deter
aggression."
Military strategists are
clearly preparing for all eventualities. And it seems the South's
citizens are also bracing for possible conflict.
The Asan Institute, a Seoul think tank, found that in 2012, ordinary South Koreans of all age groups believed war was more likely than not.
'Invasion unlikely'
At present, a second
1950-style North Korean invasion seems unlikely, but possibilities that
could ignite the peninsula tinderbox exist.
"I don't think any
parties want all-out war, but scenarios to arrive at that outcome are
some kind of miscalculation or inadvertent escalation," said Dan
Pinkston, who heads the International Crisis Group's Seoul office. "The problem is that, considering recent developments, the escalation ladder has been getting shorter."
After fatal incidents in 2010, South Korea eased its rules of engagement, enabling speedier counter attacks to Northern attacks such as naval or artillery strikes.
And in February, South Korea's top general told Seoul's National Assembly of plans for pre-emptive strikes if intelligence indicated North Korean nuclear attack preparations.
Pre-emption is critical, given the close proximity of the two Koreas.
"Once we detect long range artillery and missiles being prepared, we would have no choice but to strike," said Kim Byung-ki,
a professor at Seoul's Korea University; it takes only three minutes
for a North Korean plane to reach Seoul, and under a minute for
artillery shells to hit.
America committed
Analysts fear a limited
Northern attack might provoke a Southern response, sparking a spiral of
escalation and the dreaded "big war." With Seoul and Washington bound by
treaty, America would have to commit. "Politically, the U.S. would have
to be seen to support South Korea," said James Hardy, Asia Editor at
defense publication IHS Jane's. "If it did not, its defense policy in
Asia-Pacific would be in tatters."
North Korea's 1.1
million strong Korean People's Army, or KPA, is nearly double the size
of the 640,000-person South Korean military and the 28,000 U.S. troops
stationed in Korea.
Much of North Korea's
military is believed to be decrepit: It lacks fuel, fields outdated
equipment, and some troops are undernourished, but it wields two niche
threats: special forces and artillery.
In a report in March last year,
the commander of U.S. and U.N. forces in South Korea, General James
Thurman, warned that North Korea has continued to improve the
capabilities of the world's largest special operations force -- highly
trained specialists in unconventional, high-risk missions.
Pyongyang fields 60,000
special forces, according to Gen. Thurman -- and more than 13,000
artillery pieces, most of it deeply dug in along the DMZ, and ranged on
Seoul; the dense capital sprawls just 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of
the border.
Moreover, with its
main-force numbers and weight of firepower, the KPA might be able to
concentrate offensive units with enough mass to punch across the
fortified DMZ, through South Korean second echelon defenses, and barrel
toward the Seoul region, an area with 24 million people.
Still, given the KPA's
logistic weakness and inability to sustain battlefield operations,
analysts expect an offensive lasting only three days to one week, after
which Pyongyang could negotiate from a position of strength.
Commando force
Meanwhile, could South
Korean forces hold long enough for U.S. troops to massively reinforce?
Could U.S. forces operate effectively with their bases in Korea -- and
possibly Japan, Okinawa and Guam-- under attack by KPA commandos and
missiles? These are the imponderables.
Commandos would provide
the KPA's spearhead, infiltrating by air, sea and probably under
civilian cover to assault South Korean infrastructure and U.S. bases,
degrading Seoul's command and communications capabilities and stemming
U.S. reinforcements, said Kim of Korea University. Chaos would likely be
increased by electronic jamming measures and cyber attacks. Meanwhile,
KPA artillery could fire thousands of shells in their opening barrage,
Kim estimated.
Still, questions hang
over the KPA's war-worthiness. During Pyongyang parades, goose-stepping
battalions display the world's finest close-order drill, but under U.S.
aerial bombardment, might Kim's legions -- like Saddam Hussein's --
crack?
It seems unlikely. When
North Korean troops have engaged -- notably in Yellow Sea clashes in
1999, 2002 and 2010, and in commando raids in 1968 and 1996 -- they have
proven skilled and motivated.
But neither special
forces nor artillery are war winners alone: They cannot seize and hold
ground. The KPA's biggest weakness is the vulnerability of its main
force units once they begin to maneuver.
Aerial bombardment
The U.S. and South Korea
could fight a three-dimensional battle: KPA infantry and armored units
would be pummeled by 24-7 U.S. aerial bombardment; its forces would also
be vulnerable to heli-borne envelopment; and, because Korea is a
peninsula, the North could be flanked by sea in amphibious operations.
Still, if the KPA ran
the 30-mile gauntlet from the border and broke into Seoul, a city vaster
than Stalingrad, it would be easy to cut off but difficult to evict.
Close combat among Korea's hills and streets could prove murderous.
"They're not Saddam's
army, they're likely to fight like the Japanese in the Pacific," said
Pinkston, referring to Japan's last-ditch island stands of 1944-5. "They
would be paranoid about what would happen if they surrendered."
Destroying North Korean
artillery shelling Seoul -- much of it emplaced in tunnels that have
been dug over decades -- would be another stern task. Kim noted that
U.S. "bunker buster" bombs used in Iraq were originally designed for use
against North Korea.
Seoul and Washington
possess precision-guided munitions. Bombs or missiles bursting in bunker
entrances could bury KPA artillery and air force units, analysts say.
But the South Korean capital would likely take a severe pounding --
possibly with unconventional weapons.
Bio hazard
Last March, Thurman
said: "If North Korea employs biological weapons, it could use highly
pathogenic agents such as anthrax or the plague. In the densely
populated urban terrain of the ROK, this represents a tremendous
psychological weapon."
A marine or airborne
landing to its rear are options to take out North Korea's gun line; the
question is how much damage Seoul would suffer before such operations
could be launched. KPA missiles are an additional threat: As coalition
forces discovered in Gulf War I, finding and destroying mobile launchers
is tremendously difficult.
Yet with U.S. air power
constantly degrading KPA units, communications, headquarters and
logistics nationwide, experts see no way for Pyongyang to win a
sustained war. If South Korea and the U.S. attack into the North, the
wild card is Beijing, with whom Pyongyang has a mutual defense treaty.
Northern Korea guards
China's northeast: throughout history, a strategic flank. In 1950, with
North Korea largely overrun by U.N. forces, Beijing intervened, saving
the state from extinction. Pundits say Beijing would not support a
Pyongyang offensive, but would defend her -- suggesting Kim's regime
could survive a war, as his grandfather did.
"China will support
North Korea, but only on North Korean territory," said Choi Ji-wook,
head North Korea researcher at Seoul's Korea Institute of National
Unification. "They will not support a North Korean army attacking South
Korean territory."
Tough stance
Washington wants a
tougher Chinese stance toward North Korea, but it is unclear whether
Beijing's six-decade policy of support has altered significantly.
While supporting a vote
to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea after its nuclear test, China
recently criticized an announcement from the U.S. that it was beefing
up defense systems along the U.S. West Coast.
"Bolstering missile defenses will only intensify antagonism,
and it doesn't help to solve the issue," Hong Lei, a spokesman for the
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a regular news briefing in
Beijing.
And regardless of the Chinese role, Kim Jong Un, North Korea's young leader, possesses a doomsday option: The nuclear button.
Currently, Pyongyang is
not believed to have a missile-mounted nuclear warhead, but it may in
years to come. Experts believe the North has rockets able to hit
Japan or South Korea with air, land or sea-delivered nuclear devices or
dirty bombs. If Kim detonated a nuclear device, it would guarantee
apocalyptic retaliation and war crimes trials for any regime survivors
-- but if all looked lost, that possibility stands.
"We've never been in a
situation where a nuclear-armed country has had to make that kind of
call," mused Hardy. "If the leadership is going down like the Third
Reich, this kind of last gasp action is possible," added Pinkston.
Were the regime in
Pyongyang overthrown by war, the positives would be extensive. South
Korea would gain a land connection to the Eurasian continent; a
strategic casus belli would evaporate; northern Korea could be rebuilt
and its people ushered into the global community; and Northeast Asia
could advance toward regional integration.
But given the
destructiveness of modern weaponry and the dense populations of both
Koreas, experts pray "Korean War II" never happens.
"The casualties in a
short time would be unlike anything we have seen before: hundreds of
thousands in days, millions in weeks," said Pinkston. "The fighting in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria would pale in comparison."
Kim uses a pair of
binoculars to look south from the Jangjae Islet Defence Detachment near
South Korea's Taeyonphyong Island on March 7.
Kim is greeted by
the family of a soldier as he inspects Jangjae Islet Defence Detachment
near South Korea's Taeyonphyong Island in South Hwanghae province on
Thursday, March 7, in a photo from the state-run Korean Central News
Agency.
Kim is surrounded
by soldiers during a visit to the Mu Islet Hero Defence Detachment near
South Korea's Taeyonphyong Island on March 7. North Korea has escalated
its bellicose rhetoric, threatening nuclear strikes, just before the
U.N. Security Council passed tougher sanctions against the secretive
nation on March 7.
Kim arrives at
Jangjae Islet by boat to meet with soldiers of the Jangjae Islet Defence
Detachment near Taeyonphyong Island in South Hwanghae province on March
7.
Soldiers in the North Korean army train at an undisclosed location on March 6.
North Korean leader
Kim Jong Un, center, poses with chiefs of branch social security
stations in this undated picture released by North Korea's official news
agency on November 27, 2012.
Description: North Korea's leader has approved a plan to prepare rockets to be on standby for firing at U.S. targets, including the U.S. mainland and military bases in the Pacific and in South Korea, state media reported
