THE US believes North Korea is preparing to test a medium-range ballistic missile, but the Pentagon said it has the capacity to knock any missives aimed at the US or its allies out of the sky.
US and South Korean officials have said that the Pyongyang regime may launch the missile as early as Wednesday.
Responding to concerns that North Korea is preparing to test a medium-range missile after weeks of bellicose threats, the commander of US forces in the Pacific sought to reassure Congress that the Pentagon would be able intercept a missile aimed at the United States or its East Asian allies.
Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear said Pentagon agencies would quickly recognize if a missile's trajectory was headed into the open ocean, and that US anti-missile batteries on ships and land would knock it out of the sky if it was deemed a threat.
"We have a credible ability to defend the homeland, to defend Hawaii, to defend Guam, to defend our forward deployed forces, and to defend our allies,'' Locklear told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The US has never sought to shoot down a North Korean missile, and it's unclear if such a move would escalate the tension that has roiled the region. The Obama administration has moved additional military forces into the Pacific, but has sought to calibrate its response in the matter to avoid fueling the crisis.
A "counter-provocation plan" drawn up by US and South Korean officials calls for their combined military forces to respond proportionally to a North Korean attack, but to avoid any step that could set off an escalation of hostilities.
US Army soldiers gather during annual military drills in Yeoncheon, South Korea, near the border with North Korea on April 9, as North Korea urged foreigners to evacuate the country. Picture: AP
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has warned that even a slight miscalculation on the Korean peninsula could spiral into an "uncontrollable situation" as he urged North Korea to tone down its provocative rhetoric and ease the "very dangerous" level of tension.
Earlier, Pyongyang urged all foreign companies and tourists in South Korea to evacuate, saying the two countries are on the verge of nuclear war.
The new threat appeared to be an attempt to keep the region on tenterhooks over its intentions.
Analysts see a direct attack on Seoul as extremely unlikely, and there are no overt signs that North Korea's 1.2 million-man army is readying for war, let alone a nuclear one.
South Korea's military has reported missile movements on North Korea's east coast but nothing pointed toward South Korea.
Still, North Korea's earlier warning that it won't be able to guarantee the safety of foreign diplomats after April 10 has raised fears that it will conduct a missile or nuclear test today, resulting in US retaliation.
South Korean soldiers monitor the inter-Korean transit office in Paju, South Korea. Picture: Getty
The United States and South Korea have raised their defence postures, and so has Japan, which deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors in key locations around Tokyo yesterday as a precaution against possible North Korean ballistic missile tests.
"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the south Korean puppet warmongers and their moves for a war against" the North, said a statement by the North Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, an organisation that deals with regional matters.
The statement is similar to past threats that analysts call an attempt to raise anxiety in foreign capitals. Observers say a torrent of North Korean prophecies of doom and efforts to raise war hysteria are partly to boost the image of young and relatively untested leader Kim Jong-un at home, and to show him as a decisive military leader.
Another reason could be to use threats of war to win Pyongyang-friendly policy changes in Seoul and Washington. Last week, North Korea told foreign diplomats in Pyongyang that it will not be able to guarantee their safety as of Wednesday. It is not clear what the significance of that date is.
Tourists continued to arrive in Pyongyang despite the war hysteria.
Australian Mark Fahey of Sydney said he was not concerned about a possible war.
North Korea has shut down the Kaesong industrial area, which employed South Koreans who travelled across the border daily for work. Picture: AFP
"I knew that when I arrived here it would probably be very different to the way it was being reported in the media," he told The Associated Press at Pyongyang airport. He said his family trusts him to make the right judgment but "my colleagues at work think I am crazy."
Chu Kang Jin, a Pyongyang resident, said everything is calm in the city.
"Everyone, including me, is determined to turn out as one to fight for national reunification ... if the enemies spark a war," he said, in a typically nationalist rhetoric that most North Koreans use while speaking to the media.
In Seoul, South Korean Presidential spokeswoman Kim Haing told reporters that the North Korean warning amounted to "psychological warfare."
"We know that foreigners residing in South Korea as well as our nationals are unfazed," she said.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who has sought to re-engage North Korea with dialogue and aid since taking office in February, expressed exasperation with what she called the "endless vicious cycle" of Seoul answering Pyongyang's hostile behaviour with compromise, only to get more hostility.
Yesterday North Korea said it was suspending work at the Kaesong industrial park near its border, which is combines South Korean technology and know-how with North Korea's cheap labour. North Korea pulled out more than 50,000 workers from the complex, the only remaining product of economic cooperation between the two countries that started about a decade ago when relations were much warmer.
Other projects from previous eras of cooperation such as reunions of families separated by war and tours to a scenic North Korean mountain stopped in recent years.
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