South Korean and U.S. military officials have been closely monitoring North Korea following a threat by the regime to conduct a new ballistic missile test.
Analysts believed such a test could take place on Tuesday—which could be Monday in the U.S. due to the time difference—marking the founding of North Korea’s communist Worker’s Party.
South Korea’s military has been in a high state of monitoring and readiness alongside the U.S. military, South Korean media reported.
“We are maintaining an upgraded monitoring effort to guard against any developments,” the source said.
A U-2S high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft has been deployed by the U.S. Air Force to monitor potential military movements by the North.
A South Korean Aegis destroyer has also been deployed. The warship is equipped with a SPY-1D radar that can detect a missile launch within a range of 200 miles.
Also, a top CIA official for the Korean Peninsula, said that the United States was expecting some new provocation from Kim on Oct. 10.
Since coming to power in 2011 Kim Jong Un has sped up the country’s nuclear weapons program, conducting as many as 85 missile tests according to the U.S. State Department.
“Our country has been unsuccessfully dealing with North Korea for 25 years, giving billions of dollars & getting nothing. Policy didn’t work!,” Trump wrote on Twiter.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/917341511754436609
Trump has vowed to protect the U.S. against North Korea’s nuclear aggression, saying that only denuclearization is an option for the North’s regime. He has also been fiercely critical of talks with the North, pointing to the fact that 25 years of negotiations were unable to stop the North from developing its nuclear weapons.