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SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - Detonating a nuclear-tipped missile over the Pacific Ocean would be a logical final step by North Korea to prove the success of its weapons program but would be extremely provocative and carry huge risks, arms control experts said on Friday. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho suggested leader Kim Jong Un was considering testing “an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb” over the Pacific in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat at the United Nations to “totally destroy” the country. “It may mean North Korea will fire a warhead-tipped (intermediate range) Hwasong-12 or Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile...

Full title.......................Kim Jong-un calls President Trump 'deranged' and said he will 'pay dearly' for threatening to destroy North Korea........................... North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un called President Donald Trump 'deranged' and said that he will 'pay dearly' for his recent threats The comments were made just hours after Trump signed an executive order that would enable the US to sanction entities that finance trade with North Korea 'I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire,' Kim said of Trump

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday designed to choke North Korea's economy by penalizing nations that trade with the communist dictatorship. The order enables the Treasury Department to ramp up punishing sanctions in an effort to dissuade Pyongyang from pursuing its nuclear missile program. 'Our new executive order will cut off sources of revenue that fund North Korea's efforts to develop the deadliest weapons known to humankind,' the president told reporters ahead of a luncheon meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea. Trump warned that Pyongyang's textiles, fishing, information technology and manufacturing industries were potential...

President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that the United States will be forced to "totally destroy" North Korea unless Pyongyang backs down from its nuclear challenge, mocking North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a "rocket man" on a suicide mission. Loud murmurs filled the green-marbled U.N. General Assembly hall when Trump issued his sternest warning yet to North Korea, whose ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests have rattled the globe. Unless North Korea backs down, he said, "We will have no choice than to totally destroy North Korea." "Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime,"...

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Friday that the United States had four options — "all real options" — on North Korea and that the Defense Department was "in preparation for a real military exercise." "There are really four options that the United States looks at," Rogers, the former Michigan GOP representative, told Jake Tapper on CNN. "They're all real options. "They all have a different set of consequences." Rogers said that the first was "decapitation, meaning you strike the leadership," including dictator Kim Jong Un "and some of the senior leaders around him. "Take them out of...

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Friday that if diplomacy fails on North Korea, she has no problem letting Secretary of Defense James Mattis take the fight to Pyongyang. “I have no problem kicking it to General Mattis,” Haley said at a White House press conference, explaining that despite diplomatic efforts and strong UN sanctions, the North Koreans “continue to be provocative.” The U.S., together with its international partners, has been pursuing a diplomatic solution to the North Korea problem while maintaining that “all options are on the table.” The Trump administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it...

Full title.........................Trump stands in front of nuclear bomber to warn Kim Jong-Un that when America's Air Force is overhead enemies 'know the day of reckoning has arrived'........................... President Trump spoke to Air Force personnel against the backdrop of a nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber He warned North Korea that 'nothing inspires more confidence in our friends, or strikes more fear in the hearts of our enemies, than the sight of American war planes on the horizon' Kim Jong-Un test-launched his latest missile on Friday, launching it a long enough distance to hit the U.S. territory of Guam Trump said the U.S....

The heated debate in South Korea over redeploying U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory has now reached Washington. A senior delegation of South Korean lawmakers is in town making the case to the Trump administration and Congress that such a move is needed to confront North Korea’s growing nuclear capability and place more pressure on China. “We are here to ask for redeployment of tactical nuclear warheads in South Korea,” Lee Cheol Woo, the head of the intelligence committee of South Korea’s National Assembly, told me Thursday morning. Lee is heading a delegation of members of the Liberty Korea Party,...

Former US President Jimmy Carter said the US works more like an "oligarchy than a democracy," while also lambasting Trump's “hopeless” approach to solving the Israel-Palestine issue, and the increasing tension with North Korea. The former president was speaking at a ‘Conversation with the Carters’ event at his Carter Center in Atlanta on Tuesday. He said money in politics is what makes the US more like an oligarchy – run by a small group of rich people – rather than a democracy, AP reports. This isn’t the first time the 39th president has made such comments. In 2015, he referred...

North Korea on Friday called U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley a "political prostitute" and derided her as "crazily swishing her skirt" after she said the rogue regime was "begging for war." The state-run Korean Central News Agency described Haley’s comments to the UN Sunday as a “hysteric fit.” “Nikki should be careful with her tongue though she might be a blind fool,” KCNA said. “The U.S. administration will have to pay a dear price for her tongue-lashing." Japanese Coast Guard ships escort RRN as she departs for patrol #Partnership #17-2Patrol https://t.co/nqgVTJhySX — USS Ronald Reagan (@Gipper_76) September...

China detects rising radiation levels in areas close to North Korean nuclear blast site Monitoring stations record upward trend, but expert says it could be explained by natural causes PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 06 September, 2017, 9:52pm UPDATED : Thursday, 07 September, 2017, 10:58am Chinese scientists are considering whether a small but gradual increase in environmental radiation picked up by monitoring stations close to the border with North Korea is related to the nuclear test carried out over the weekend. The changes could be down to environmental factors and unrelated to the nuclear test, but the trend was “worthy of attention”,...

U.S. officials are closely monitoring an ongoing meeting between senior North Korean and Iranian officials that comes on the heels of a nuclear test by Pyongyang, according to senior Trump administration officials and other sources who expressed concern that North Korea is helping to put the Islamic Republic back on the pathway to a functional nuclear weapon. Sources told the Washington Free Beacon that Pyongyang continues to stockpile illicit nuclear material on Iran's behalf in order to help the Islamic Republic skirt restrictions implemented under the landmark nuclear deal. North Korea's latest nuclear test of a hydrogen bomb has roiled...

THE United States has carried out a second test of a bomb, described as the most dangerous nuclear weapon ever produced, as tensions with North Korea escalate. US authorities confirmed the test was successful and the B61-12 gravity bomb is expected to go into production within three years. The B61-12 gravity bombs were 'inert' but they were dropped from F-15E fighter jets at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada on August 8, the National Nuclear Security Administration said. The tests were intended to check the bomb’s “non-nuclear functions and the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon.” Despite the weapons' nuclear capability...

South Korea's air force has staged a live-fire drill simulating the destruction of North Korea's leadership, hours after Pyongyang launched a missile over Japan. Just before 6 a.m. South Korea time Tuesday, North Korea fired an unidentified missile from near the capital Pyongyang, towards the northeast. It flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, making it the first North Korean projectile to successfully pass over Japanese territory since 1998. It subsequently broke up and fell into the Pacific Ocean. Just hours after the launch, South Korea's Presidential Office announced four F-15K jetfighters had dropped eight MK 84 bombs on...

North Korea launched at least one missile (and possibly more) over North Japan, specifically, the island of Hokkaido. Here, in red, is Hokkaido, a very populated island (5+ million) almost directly connected to mainland Japan:This is a belligerent Act of War. To put it in more relatable terms, it is if I pulled a pistol, aimed it in the general direction of your head, and fired -- purposefully missing by twelve inches.There are rumors that FatBody Jong-un is having some internal power struggles, and is purging his capitol city of people.But whatever the situation in Pyongyang, the truth of the...

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that a “projectile” had been fired into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan on Saturday morning. It was not immediately clear what kind of missile it was. The launch comes during joint exercises between the U.S. and South Korean militaries, exercises that North Korea always strongly protests, considering them preparation for an invasion. This is a developing story. It will be updated.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday that the United States would know the trajectory of a missile fired by North Korea within moments and would "take it out" if the missile looked like hitting the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. U.S. officials and South Korea's president in recent days have played down the risk of an imminent conflict after Washington and Pyongyang exchanged fiery rhetoric last week. But Mattis told reporters that war could break out if North Korea were to fire a missile at the United States. "If they fire at the United States, it...

Bill Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama have one thing in common -- they had a chance to take out North Korea's nuclear threat with minimal risk to the US. Politically speaking, I believe it is really that simple. No matter how Trump handles this, he is trying to solve a crisis that NEVER should have arisen. There was no ounce of prevention, but the future cure could be unspeakable not only in terms of human lives, but also the worst environmental disaster in human history.

Therefore, it was critical for North Korea to appear irrational. Only apparent irrationality, meticulously managed, could convince the Americans, the South Koreans, the Japanese, the Russians, and the Chinese that North Korea was utterly dangerous. But the regime's apparent irrationality had to be calibrated in such a way that North Korea's dangerousness was never so credible or imminent that someone would preemptively attack it.

On the surface, the conflict between the US and North Korea looks simply like the world’s superpower trying to quell the dangerous power of a dictatorial madman. However, after examining the details of this conflict more closely, a much more complex and dangerous situation is revealed. The origins of this conflict began during the time of World War II. Up until the end of the great war, Korea was ruled by Imperial Japan. After the US and Soviet Union defeated Japan, they came to an agreement to where they would both share the land for military purposes. The Soviet and...