"North Korea Moves Missile to Coast as Nuclear Crisis Escalates"
Quote:North Korea has moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast, South Korea said Thursday as Russia warned that Pyongyang's decision to pursue a nuclear program “radically complicates” the prospect of resuming international talks.As I said in the previous post; they can only escalate this so much before they have to back down or actually do something...
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin told lawmakers the moved missile has "considerable range" but not enough to hit the U.S. mainland, according to The Associated Press.
It came hours after North Korea's military warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons -- the latest in a string of war cries against America in recent weeks.
"The moment of explosion is approaching fast,” the military statement said.
Meanwhile, a former UN official who visited North Korea last year reported that officials there said they could restart the Yongbyon reactor in three months.
That is a lot shorter than many U.S. nuclear experts believe a restart would take.
U.S. officials told NBC News that no matter what the timeline is, they don't believe the operation would be a huge engineering challenge. A restart would, however, be significant, as it would give North Korea the capability to make weapons-grade plutonium again. The reactor was shut down in 2007.
"North Korea's assertion that it intends to bring Yongbyon back online can't be easily written off as an insurmountable hurdle," one U.S. official said.
