China has urged the US and North Korea to step back from the brink of a potentially catastrophic conflict after Pyongyang warned it would not “keep its arms crossed” in the event of a pre-emptive strike.
Speaking in Beijing on Friday, the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, told reporters the region faced a “precarious situation” in which “one has the feeling that a conflict could break out at any moment”.
He made his plea before an anticipated sixth North Korean nuclear test on Saturday to mark the birth of the country’s founder, Kim Il-sung.
“We call on all parties to refrain from provoking and threatening each other, whether in words or actions, and not to let the situation get to an irreversible and unmanageable stage,” Wang said, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.
“If a war occurs, the result is a situation in which everybody loses and there can be no winner. It is not the one who espouses harsher rhetoric or raises a bigger fist that will win.”
Experts believe Pyongyang could defy Trump by carrying out a missile launch or nuclear test to coincide with the so-called Day of the Sun on 15 April, commemorating the birth of the country’s founder. Satellite imagery has revealed signs of preparations for a possible nuclear test in a new tunnel complex at the Punggye-ri military site.
Scores of foreign reporters have been allowed into Pyongyang to cover celebrations to mark the 105th anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth, but they have not been granted access to military-related areas. Some North Korea specialists played down expectations of a test, however, saying the regime was more likely to use the military parade in Pyongyang to showcase a new long-range missile it is developing.
The US vice president, Mike Pence, is due to fly to South Korea on Sunday, in what the White House said was a show of support for its regional ally. Aides said there were contingency plans for trip in case North Korea carries out a nuclear test.
On Thursday evening, NBC News cited intelligence officials as saying the US could carry out a pre-emptive conventional strike if it got intelligence that the North Koreans were about to test, but that was strongly denied by Pentagon officials.
However, administration officials repeated on Friday that military options were under active consideration in the search for containing Kim Jong-un’s nuclear aspirations.
Speaking in advance of Pence’s trip, a senior official said: “We’ve got some military options already being assessed, but we’ll work that as we sit down in discussions with General Brooks, the commander there on Peninsula.”
“[Kim] continues to develop this program,” the official said. “He continues to launch missiles into the Sea of Japan. So with that regime it’s not a matter of “if,” it’s “when.” So we’re well prepared to counter that.”
Writing in the Global Times, a Communist party-controlled tabloid, one Chinese scholar urged Trump against carrying out a Syria-style bombing campaign against North Korea. “North Korea is not Syria. It may have the ability to strike South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons,” said Li Jiacheng, a fellow at Liaoning University in north-eastern China.
“If the US makes a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, Pyongyang will attack South Korea, Japan and the US forces stationed in the two countries,” Li warned. “What’s more, the war will not be a blitz but a protracted one, which will require a lot of energy from the countries involved.”
“In the current situation, [the] possibility is still low that the US will initiate a war on the peninsula,” Li added. “However, because of Trump’s unpredictability, it is difficult to predict his policy toward the region.”
On Thursday, Trump, who has previously accused Beijing of failing to rein in its North Korean ally, said he believed China was prepared to act. “I have great confidence that China will properly deal with North Korea. If they are unable to do so, the US, with its allies, will!” he wrote on Twitter.
However, despite signs of warming ties between the US and China, experts doubt the relationship is sufficiently sturdy for definitive collaboration on North Korea.
“I don’t think we are anywhere near a place right now where either side trusts the other to a depth that you believe that you could sustain and maintain that kind of relationship for that long a period of time.”
The rise in tensions came ahead of the arrival in South Korea on Sunday of the US vice-president, Mike Pence, who will also visit Japan, Washington’s other key ally in the region, early next week.
Seoul and Tokyo are considered at greatest risk of a North Korean counterattack in the event of a pre-emptive strike by the US. On Thursday, Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, warned that North Korea may be capable of attacking the country with a missile loaded with sarin nerve gas – the same substance used in a deadly attack on the Tokyo subway by a Japanese doomsday cult in 1995.
North Korea appears to have resumed the use of cold war scare tactics with the radio broadcast of indecipherable code that could be used to communicate with its spies in the South. Radio broadcasts containing a combination of mysterious random numbers were picked up in South Korea on Friday, according to Yonhap news agency.
Some experts in South Korea said the use of radio broadcasts – a common means of issuing orders to agents during the cold war – was outmoded and could instead be intended to raise tensions. The state-run Pyongyang Radio began broadcasting the messages early on Friday, with an announcer reading out a series of numbers and page numbers.
The radio announcer referred to the numbers as “review works in elementary information technology lessons of the remote education university for No 27 expedition agents”, according to Yonhap.
North Korea ended broadcasts of encrypted numbers after tensions with South Korea eased following a historic inter-Korea summit in 2000. Their resumption last June is seen as a reflection of how far relations have deteriorated.
Yonhap said Pyongyang Radio had made 32 such broadcasts since June last year, most recently last weekend. With agents based in the South now able to communicate with their handlers via the internet, the use of numbers, which they would then decipher using a reference book, appears outdated.
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