N Korea Warns US of Nuclear Strike: Today or Tomorrow

Local Editor

The United States scrambled to reinforce its Pacific missile defenses, preparing to send ground-based interceptors to Guam, as North Korea said Thursday it had authorized plans for nuclear strikes on US targets.

"The moment of explosion is approaching fast," the North Korean military said, warning that war could break out "today or tomorrow."
Meanwhile, US War Secretary Chuck Hagel said Pyongyang's increasingly bellicose threats combined with its military capabilities represented a "real and clear danger" to the United States and to its allies South Korea and Japan.
"They have nuclear capacity now, they have missile delivery capacity now," Hagel said Wednesday. "We take those threats seriously, we have to take those threats seriously."

The Pentagon said it would send ground-based THAAD missile-interceptor batteries to protect military bases on Guam, a US territory some 3,380 kilometers southeast of North Korea and home to 6,000 American military personnel, submarines and bombers.

They would complement two Aegis anti-missile destroyers already dispatched to the region.
Shortly after the THAAD announcement, the North Korean military said it had received final approval for military action against the United States, possibly involving nuclear weapons.

"The moment of explosion is approaching fast," the Korean People's Army general staff said, responding to what it called the provocative US use of nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers in ongoing war games with South Korea.
The US aggression would be "smashed by... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means," it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, reports mentioned Thursday that North Korea appears to have moved a medium-range missile capable of hitting targets in South Korea and Japan to its east coast.

"We are closely monitoring whether the North moved it with a view to actual launch or just as a show of force against the US," Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean official as saying.

North Korea blocked access to its Kaesong joint industrial zone with South Korea Thursday for the second day running, and threatened to pull out its 53,000 workers in a furious reaction to the South's airing of a military contingency plan to protect its own workers there.
Pyongyang informed Seoul on Wednesday it was stopping the daily movement of South Koreans to the Kaesong complex, the last real surviving point of contact between the two countries.
"The full closure of the complex is set to become a reality," a spokesman for the North's Committee for Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) said.
North Korea threatened a "pre-emptive" nuclear strike against the United States in early March, and last week its supreme army command ordered strategic rocket units to combat status.

The escalating crisis has triggered global concern, with China and Russia issuing repeated calls for restraint and UN Chief Ban Ki-moon warning that the situation had "gone too far" and risked spiraling out of control.

Source: News agencies, Edited by moqawama.org