North Korea LIVE: US set to put nuclear bombers back on 24-hour alert

During a visit to Beijing next month, President Donald Trump will attempt to persuade China’s leader to do more to rein in North Korea, after having criticised the country for not taking more action on the issue.

In a bilateral meeting, Trump will also urge President Xi Jinping to fully implement sanctions by the United Nations Security Council against Pyongyang and to take steps that go beyond that, an official told reporters.

President Donald Trump plans to use his 12-day, five-nation Asia trip to encourage a tougher stance against the threat posed by North Korea, but he likely will not make the traditional presidential visit to the border between North and South Korea known as the Demilitarized Zone, Sun Herald reported.

The White House said Monday that Trump was invited by Korean president Moon Jae-in to visit Camp Humphreys, a military base about 40 miles south of Seoul, and that time constraints would likely not permit Trump to also travel to the border.

Aside from threatening nuclear war against the United States, North Korea is also suspected of secretly developing a vast biological-weapons program that could unleash fear and death in crowded cities, a Harvard University study warns.

"North Korea is likely to use biological weapons before or at the beginning of a conflict to disrupt society and create panic, incapacitate societies, and/or cause a significant military diversion," said the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Popular NBC News show “Morning Joe” went nuclear Monday morning as hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski openly talked about their fear of a US war with North Korea, The Wrap reported.

Brzezinski — as is her custom — went further, saying she believed Trump was “excited” about the prospect of conflict and of deploying the US nuclear arsenal to settle the dispute with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“I just think he wants to use nukes, that’s what I think he feels,” said Brzezinski. “You’ve heard him over the past year. He’s excited about the concept.”

China on Monday defended its growing trade with North Korea as permitted by UN Security Council sanctions that say they should avoid hurting “humanitarian needs”, Associated Press reported.

China, North Korea’s main trading partner, “strictly implements” sanctions aimed at stopping the North’s pursuit of nuclear and missile technology, said a foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang.

Customs data shows Chinese exports to North Korea rose 31.4 percent in August from a year earlier, while imports fell 9.5 percent. Beijing has pointed out the sanctions don’t prohibit food sales and argued against measures that might harm the North Korean public.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has called on North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un to negotiate over his nuclear ambitions but warned the rogue state a nuclear pre-emptive strike remains a possibility, Sky News reported.

Boris Johnson said he backed a series of 'commitments' made by South Korea and the US Secretary of State's efforts to talk, making it clear the UK did not seek to bring about regime change.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May and her Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe today agreed to maintain pressure on North Korea following the Japanese Prime Minister’s re-election.The two leaders vowed to continue working with the international community to tackle Kim Jong Un’s “destabilising activity”, a Downing Street spokesman revealed.

The US Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991, Defense One reported.

That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of Barksdale Air Force Base’s 11,000-foot runway could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’snotice.

The threat from North Korea has grown to a critical and imminent level and the United States, Japan and South Korea need to take different responses to address it, Japanese DefenseMinister ItsunoriOnodera told his US and South Korean counterparts on Monday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised strong "counter-measures" against North Korea, after winning a decisive victory in Sunday's election, BBC reported.

The prime minister had earlier called for the existence of the country's armed forces to be formalised, a controversial move which he says is needed to strengthen Japan's defence but which critics say is a step towards re-militarisation.

Southeast Asian defence ministers on Monday expressed “grave concern” over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes and urged the reclusive country to meet its international obligations and resume communications, reports Reuters.

North Korea is working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the US mainland and has ignored all calls, even from its lone major ally, China, to rein in its weapons programmes which it conducts in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

Defence ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in a joint statement, underscored the “need to maintain peace and stability in the region” and called “for the exercise of self-restraint and the resumption of dialogue to de-escalate tensions in the Korean peninsula”.

President Donald Trump boasted that the US is "prepared for anything" when it comes to the North Korea nuclear crisis and emphasized the importance of China's role during an interview with Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo broadcast on Sunday morning, reports CNN.

Trump said he believes Chinese President Xi Jinping has "the power to do something very significant with respect to North Korea."

But no matter Xi's actions, Trump said the United States is "prepared for anything" when it comes to North Korea.

"We'll see what happens. ... We are so prepared, like you wouldn't believe," he said.

Trump further praised China's actions on North Korea, adding that he and Xi have an "exceptional relationship."

UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson is to hail the importance of coordinated international diplomacy to counter the threat from nuclear weapons and North Korea in a speech to stake out a position at clear odds with the more bellicose rhetoric of Donald Trump, reports The Guardian.

While Johnson will stress that the US president has “an absolute duty” to prepare for a possible military option if North Korea is about to attack the United States, the foreign secretary will say diplomatic efforts must be paramount.

In a speech to be made on Monday to the annual conference of the Chatham House thinktank in London, Johnson will single out for praise Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, who has annoyed Trump by pushing for dialogue with Pyongyang.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump agreed to work together to raise pressure on North Korea, Yasutoshi Nishimura, a deputy chief cabinet secretary, said on Monday.

Abe and Trump spoke by telephone after the Japanese premier’s ruling coalition scored a big win in an election on Sunday, reports Reuters.

US President Donald Trump is expected to pressure China’s president when they meet next month in Beijing to do more to rein in North Korea out of a belief that Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power should give him more authority to do so, reports Reuters. Trump leaves November 3 on a trip that will take him to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. It will be his first tour of Asia since taking power in January and one with a major priority: Preventing the standoff with North Korea from spiralling out of control.

Xi is immersed in a Communist Party Congress expected to culminate in him consolidating his control and potentially retaining power beyond2022,when the next Congress takes place. Trump believes that Xi should have even more leverage to work on the North Korea problem. “The president’s view is you have even less of an excuse now,” said one official. “He’s not going to step lightly.”

Pyongyang does not plan to hold any talks with Washington about its nuclear program, a senior North Korean diplomat said on Friday, declaring that possessing nuclear weapons was a matter of life and death for North Korea, the RIA news agency reported. Choe Son-hui, director-general of the North American department of North Korea’s foreign ministry, told a non-proliferation conference in Moscow Washington would “have to put up” with North Korea’s nuclear status. “This is a matter of life and death for us. The current situation deepens our understanding that we need nuclear weapons to repel a potential attack. We will respond to fire with fire.”

Vietnam has expelled the representative of North Korea's Wonyang Shipping Corporation and denied visas to more than 20 North Korean IT workers.

In a move that reflects Hanoi's displeasure with Pyongyang, Vietnam continues to turn away North Koreans who could be earning foreign currency for the Kim Jong-un regime, Yonhap reported today.

Russian forces in the Pacific today launched a joint drill with India off the coast of its border with North Korea, according to Russian state-run news agency Itar-Tass.

The Indra-2017 exercise, which will draft a total of 700 ground troops from both countries and 50 aircraft including warplanes and helicopters, kicked off with a ceremony in Russia’s Vladivostok, the capital of its Primorye region.

A North Korea diplomat has said the country's ballistic nuclear weapons programme is non-negotiable.

Choe Son-hui said the US should "be prepared to co-exist with" a nuclear North Korea. She said it was "the only way to secure lasting peace on the Korean peninsula".

Read this interesting piece by Gulf News on how Kim Jong-un's seemingly erratic actions are, in fact, moves in a very well-planned long-term game.

North Korea is distributing live ammunition to soldiers and security personnel, the Asahi Shimbun reported yesterday.

The majority of Americans believe diplomacy is the best way to ease tensions with North Korea, according to a new poll released Thursday.Sixty-four percent of people disagree with President Trump’s claim that Secretary of State Tillerson is “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump’s nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, New York Daily News reported.

In a Quinnipiac University poll conducted yesterday, it was found that as many as 46 percent of all Republicans are in favour of a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, despite the risk of a nuclear rebuttal.
In contrast, 41 percent said they did not support a pre-emptive strike.

North Korea’s nuclear tests are not only raising fears around the world, they are causing the peak under which the bombs are being detonated to suffer “tired mountain syndrome.”Analysts are seeing signs that Mount Mantap, the 7,200-foot-high peak under which the tests are conducted, is suffering from the geologic malady, the Washington Post reported.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signaled growing US impatience with China on issues from North Korea to trade while vowing to stay on the job as long as President Donald Trump will have him, Bloomberg reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said the uncertainty about US President Donald Trump's foreign policies has made European countries closer, adding that Trump's actions "reinforce the need for unity and clarity" from the EU.

The French leader said that a united voice is important for international discussions about Iran and North Korea's nuclear activities, and about Europe's own defense programs.

North Korea is building its biggest submarine to date that could be used to launch nuclear missiles further than ever before, theDaily Mirror reported citing intelligence sources.

The new submarine is thought to be being built at Sinpo South Shipyard, a site used to equip submarines with ballistic missiles, where satellite images exposed 'ongoing activity' earlier this month.

When fully-operational, the Sinpo-C, which will weigh in excess of 2,000 tonnes, could be capable of carrying a new missile - the Pukguksong-3 - which was accidentally revealed in pictures of Kim Jong-un on a factory inspection in August.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking into a Chinese business owner who was linked to a ship found smuggling North Korean rocket-propelled grenades last year, and who has ties to a North Korean trade and financing network, according to people familiar with the matter.

Pakistan and North Korea have not been invited to the first 2-day global conference on consumer protection to be inaugurated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi next week, Indian Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said today.

The South Korean army has said it is developing a missile powerful enough to destroy North Korea’s underground military facilities and command centre, and is confident it can obliterate the North’s frontline artillery systems in the event of a war on the peninsula, Irish Times reported.

The ferry service between Russia and North Korea has resumed after being suspended in August due to a financial dispute with Vladivostok port unrelated to the sanctions on Pyongyang, the operator said. However, unlike earlier, the vessel is transporting only cargo, no passengers.

Kim Jong-un reportedly threw a tantrum when one one of his officials, who happened to be a reader of the Norfolk observer, told the leader about a comment made by a departing NNDC councillor recently.
Doug Smith, a member of the Conservative group at North Norfolk District Council who recently resigned, had said: “I wanted to join a group whose respect for people’s opinions is not based on those of North Korea.”

Check out this interesting backgrounder on the whole North Korean issue published by The James Town Foundation.

Two months after Texas Baptist Men appealed to the US Department of State to grant a Dallas Korean Baptist minister permission to enter North Korea with food for orphans and hospital patients, Yoo Yoon still has no answer.

Yoon, director of the Korean-American Sharing Movement of Dallas, has traveled to North Korea about 30 times since 1996 to supervise the delivery of food, medical supplies and other resources provided by TBM and other donors to schools for orphans and hospitals. Read the full story by Baptist Standard here.

Asian Cup qualifiers between Malaysia and North Korea will take place at a neutral venue next month after a diplomatic row and nuclear tensions repeatedly delayed the first leg, football officials said today.

Russia remains a greater threat to US security than North Korea or the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) because President Vladimir Putin still views the world in “Cold War terms,” according to ex-NATO commander Wesley Clark, who is also a retired 4-star US military general.

Clark told Newsweek that President Donald Trump’s flip-flopping on whether the United States will uphold NATO’s key self-defense principle and his affability towards Putin is “very confusing to the American public.”

North Korea does not plan to hold any talks with Washington about its nuclear program, a senior North Korean diplomat said today, adding that possessing nuclear weapons was a matter of life and death for North Korea.

India has put in place a stricter regime for trade with North Korea in line with the restrictions imposed by the United Nations, Economic Times reported.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has come out with a notification to widen the prohibition on direct or indirect import and export from/to North Korea.

"The direct or on direct or indirect supply, sale, transfer or export of specified items to North Korea is prohibited," it said.

According to Russian news agency Interfax, an official for the North Korea's foreign ministry today said that all attempts to strangle the country via UN sanctions would be taken as attempts to 'declare war.'

As tensions over North Korea's nuclear program keep mounting, a North Korean foreign ministry spokesperson today said that Pyongyang won't hold talks on its nuclear weapons and added that the Americans would have to put up with the DPRK's nuclear status.

"North Korea lives underthe constant threat ofa nuclear attack bythe US. Last week, the unprecedented exercises involving American aircraft carriers and strategic bombers were carried out. And every action triggers a counter-action. Our leader has clarified our position, that suggests that we will pacify the US and will respond tofire withfire," she said.

Bruce Klingner, Senior Research Fellow at the conservative American think tank Heritage Foundation has praised President Moon Jae-in’s diplomacy and security-related policies, saying they have been welcomed by the US, North Korea Inside reported.

Klinger said he was surprised by Moon’s shift to the middle on diplomatic and North Korea policies, pointing to his decision to allow the deployment of a US THAAD antimissile system to South Korea.

Ugandan deputy minister of foreign affairs, Okello Oryem, has said that North Korean military experts and representatives of North Korean companies have been forced to leave the country, in a bid to comply with United Nations sanctions over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

Oryem told Associated Press that directors of North Korean firms are no longer in Uganda. He says any North Koreans still in the East African nation are diplomats or private individuals.

Former CIA Director John Brennan said he's worried about President Trump's handling of North Korea and that he feels the possibility of military engagement is now "too high," CBS reported.

"I think the prospects of military conflict in the Korean peninsula are greater than they have been in several decades," Brennan said. "I don't think it's likely or probable, but if it's a 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 chance, that's too high."

South Korea's unification minister met with the head of a UN agency on population today to discuss Seoul's possible support for its census on North Korea, government officials told news agency Yonhap.

Minister Cho Myoung-gyon held talks with Natalia Kanem, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), who is in Seoul for a forum on population.

Sri Lankan publication Hiru News has reported that a US warship patrolling the sea of Japan has been issued an order to ready Tomahawk cruise missiles for a potential strike on North Korea.

Moscow and Washington are continuing a dialogue on North Korea and the future of the international deal on Iran’s nuclear program, RIA news agency cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying today.

In a rare interview with a North Korean military official, NBC News' Kier Simmons found that North Korean officials watched the show 'Morning Joe' every morning to tune into reports and discussions about their country.

In the interview, the official was quoted as saying that he thought President Trump to be "mentally ill" and that he believed North Korea would prevail in a nuclear conflict with the United States.

A new poll by NBC News and SurveyMonkeyhas revealed that 54 percent Americans believe North Korea to be the most immediate threat to the country.

This majority opinion represents a shift since July, when 41 percent of Americans said North Korea was the greatest immediate threat and 28 percent said it was ISIS.

US President Donald Trump risks driving Iran towards nuclear proliferation and worsening a standoff with North Korea if Washington ends a nuclear deal with Tehran, former Secretary of State John Kerry said late yesterday.

“If you want to negotiate with Kim Jong-un, and your goal is to avoid war and try to be able to have a diplomatic resolution, the worst thing you can do is first threaten to destroy his country in the United Nations,” Kerry said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today urged world powers to get behind a joint Russian-Chinese roadmap for settling the crisis over North Korea’s weapons program.

Speaking at a conference on non-proliferation in Moscow, Lavrov said that the break-up of a deal on Iran’s nuclear program would send an alarming message about international security mechanisms, and could impact the situation on the Korean peninsula.