North Korea came under the latest round of United Nations Security Council sanctions in March after Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test in January and the launch of a long-range rocket the following month. There has not been a meeting between the two Koreas in Laos, nor is one known to be planned.
Advertisement
Ri is expanding the scope of his activity at the ASEAN Regional Forum by taking advantage of the fact that the chair of the forum is Laos, which has traditionally been friendly to North Korea, and by attempting to drive a wedge into the crack between South Korea and China that was opened up by the dispute over deploying the THAAD missile defense system.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), scheduled to be in place by 2017, has left China distrustful of South Korea.
“Under the trilateral information-sharing agreement with the United States and Japan, South Korea is obliged to share the information it gets on North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests with Japan through the U.S. But the information detected by the THAAD radar won’t be going to Tokyo”, a government official told Yonhap.
Ri, 59, was previously North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator at the long-stalled, six-party talks aimed at halting the hermit state’s weapon’s programme.
A North Korean media-released photo showed the missile range would encompass all of South Korea, including the port of Busan where USA reinforcement forces would land.
“Under the trilateral information-sharing agreement with the U.S. and Japan, South Korea is obliged to share the information it gets on North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests with Japan through the U.S. But the information detected by the THAAD radar won’t be going to Tokyo”, a South Korean government official, familiar with the matter, told Yonhap News Agency. He said the North Korean agents are drawing up specific plans to conduct terrorist attacks on South Koreans to show their loyalty to Kim. The exact date and location of the ballistic missile is unknown.
South Korea critics claim fears of radiation risks from the missile shield’s radar, saying it would kill bees and irradiate melons. The U.S. invited South Korean media to the missile shield’s deployment site on Guam for independent tests.
Advertisement
Critics fail to understand that North Korea will continue to develop nuclear-tipped missiles regardless of whether the advanced defense system is deployed or not.
