While North Korean President Kim Jong Un has issued threats before, the tension arguably has risen now that South Korea and the US are currently in the middle of their annual defensive springtime war games which will run through the end of April.
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Cyberattacks against South Korea have doubled in the past month.
“The secretary-general obviously remains gravely concerned by the situation on the Korean Peninsula”, Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told the Korean news service Yonhap.
North Korea has said it is developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles although doubts about that were raised after Western experts said publicly released footage of tests appeared to be fake.
The North Korean leader was quoted in state media this week as saying his country had miniaturized nuclear warheads to mount on ballistic missiles.
North Korea didn’t say what exactly it would do with the South Korean assets. Kim last week ordered his country to be ready to use nuclear weapons in the face of what he sees as growing threats from enemies.
The US is unsure if the missing vessel is adrift or whether it has sunk, CNN reported, but officials believe it suffered a failure during an exercise.
In August a year ago, Seoul said said 70 percent of the North’s total submarine fleet-or around 50 vessels-had left their bases and disappeared from South’s military radar, sparking alarm.
North Korea has issued almost daily reports in recent days of Kim’s instructions to fight South Korea and the United States as the two allies began large-scale military drills.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a news conference Friday after meeting with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov that putting the system in South Korea would “inflict direct harm to the strategic security interests of China and Russia”. “At the same time, we will not spare efforts to return to the six-way talks”, he added.
Kim said that the two sides appreciated China’s role in adopting the new sanctions resolution and agreed to further strengthen cooperation with Beijing in carrying out the resolution and seeking the North’s denuclearization.
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“I assess, as the commander there, that it’s the prudent decision on my part to assume that he has the capability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon and put it on an ICBM”, Gortney said, referring to an intercontinental ballistic missile.
