SEOUL: North Korea is poised to conduct a nuclear test, Seoul said on Thursday, as the United States advised it could come as President Joe Biden visits South Korea this week.
The visits to Seoul, followed by Tokyo, are being touted as evidence that Washington is seeking to cement its times-long pivot to Asia, where rising Chinese marketable and military power is undercutting decades of US dominance.
Still, Biden’s first trip as chairman to the region looks set to be overshadowed by a decreasingly truculent North Korea.
Despite a spiraling Covid outbreak, Pyongyang’s “ medications for a nuclear test have been completed and they’re only looking for the right time”, South Korean legislator Ha Tae-Keung said after being briefed by Seoul’s asset agency.
US intelligence says there’s a “ genuine possibility” that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un could carry this “ provocation” after Biden arrives in Seoul on Friday, his administration said.
This could mean “ further bullet tests, long-range bullet tests or a nuclear test, or honestly both” around the time of Biden’s trip, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said.
Satellite imagery indicates North Korea is preparing to conduct what would be its seventh nuclear test — which would limit a record-breaking blitz of launches this time, including multinational ballistic dumdums.
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“ North Korea will want to attract global attention by conducting a nuclear test during President Biden’s visit,” Cheong Seong-chang of the Center for North Korea Studies at the Sejong Institute said.
Biden, who’ll visit some of the nearly US colors posted in South Korea, is ready to make “ adaptations” to the US military posture in the region, and Seoul’s hawkish new President Yoon Suk-yeol is eager for stronger ties.
Both Biden and Yoon have said they ’re open to addresses with Pyongyang but they anticipate seeing real progress on denuclearisation — which judges say is anathema to Kim and will stall addresses.
“ Biden judges that the North Korean issue can’t be resolved through improvisational meetings between the leaders as Trump did,” said Woo Jung-yeop, an experimenter at the Sejong Institute.
North Korea will be watching the outgrowth of the Yoon-Biden meeting Saturday veritably nearly, said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.
“ Depending on the result, North Korea will decide on whether it’ll speed up or decelerate down its ICBM and nuclear tests,” Yang said.
Sullivan said the security situation regarding North Korea was being “ nearly” coordinated with South Korea and Japan and that he’d also spoken about the issue with his Chinese counterpart on Wednesday.
It’s likely that Kim is still mooting what to do, in particular, due to this US pressure on Beijing — Kim’s sole major supporter — to help rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear and ICBM tests, the Sejong Institute’s Cheong said.
