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North Korea tested "short-range system" last week, US plays down threat
The development came as the administration of President Joe Biden is in the final stages of reviewing US policy toward North Korea, with national security advisers of the United States, Japan and South Korea planning to meet next week in Washington to coordinate their approaches.
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This files screen grab image taken from North Korean broadcaster KCTV on August 1, 2019 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watching the launch of a ballistic missile at an unknown location in North Korea early on July 31. North Korea fired several missiles just days after a visit to the region by the top US defense and diplomatic officials, a US official said on March 23, 2021, in Pyongyang's first overt challenge to the administration of US President Joe Biden. (AFP/KCTV)
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orth Korea tested a short-range weapons system last weekend, but the United States sees the move as "normal" military activity by Pyongyang and will leave the door open for dialogue, senior US government officials said Tuesday.
The development came as the administration of President Joe Biden is in the final stages of reviewing US policy toward North Korea, with national security advisers of the United States, Japan and South Korea planning to meet next week in Washington to coordinate their approaches.
While the US officials declined to speak in detail of North Korea's military activity on the grounds that the information comes from intelligence, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said North Korea fired two cruise missiles off its west coast Sunday.
Serious provocations from North Korea, such as the test-firing of a long-range ballistic missile, could have immediately posed a challenge to the two-month-old Biden administration.
But US officials were keen to play down the concerns, emphasizing that there was no violation of UN Security Council resolutions and the testing of what they called a "short-range system" fell into the category of "normal military activity" by Pyongyang.
"North Korea has a familiar menu of provocations when it wants to send a message to a US administration: ballistic missiles of various range, mobile and submarine launch platforms, nuclear and thermonuclear tests. Experts rightly recognized what took place last weekend as falling on the low end of that spectrum," one of the officials said.
The Biden administration has been reaching out to North Korea from mid-February, without receiving any direct response through diplomatic channels.
"We do not see the activity that took place this weekend is closing that door (of dialogue)," the official said.
Reflecting the administration's emphasis to work closely with the two key allies in Asia to achieve North Korea's denuclearization, another official said Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will have a trilateral session with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts as well as bilateral engagements with them next week.
"We'll review...all the issues of critical concern...We'll try to strategize about how best we can coordinate going forward," the official said, noting that Japan is "very focused" on having the issue of North Korea's past abduction of Japanese nationals taken into consideration.
He also said the gathering is part of efforts to "improve communications between Seoul and Tokyo" which have been increasingly soured by a bilateral dispute over the compensation of wartime labor during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
"We believe a strong working relationship between Japan and South Korea is in the clear national security interests of the United States," he said.
North Korea has not tested any intercontinental ballistic missiles or nuclear devices since 2017.
But the secretive country is believed to have continued honing its military capabilities, such as through the test-firing of short-range missiles, while nuclear negotiations with the administration of Biden's predecessor Donald Trump were in a stalemate.
Last week, Kim Yo Jong, younger sister and close aide of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, lambasted the US-South Korea military exercises and criticized the new US administration for wanting to spread the "smell of gunpowder from across the ocean."
The week also coincided with a trip to Asia by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for meetings with their Japanese and South Korean counterparts to showcase the strength of their alliances.
