18 April 2017 10:20 am
US Vice President Mike Pence used a visit to the heavily militarised border between the two Koreas on Monday to declare “all options are on the table” in dealing with Pyongyang, the day after the North’s latest failed missile test.
Pence’s trip to the flashpoint frontier underscored Washington’s shifting policy towards the isolated state after years of nuclear and missile tests carried out in defiance of the international community.
The visit comes after a huge military parade during which North Korea showcased apparent intercontinental ballistic missiles, and as a US carrier group converges on the Korean peninsula, ratcheting up tensions to their highest point in years.
Washington wants to achieve security “through peaceable means, through negotiations. But all options are on the table as we continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of South Korea,” Pence said at the village of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarised Zone. Pence, speaking at Freedom House, a few metres from the military demarcation line that he described as a “frontier of freedom”, said America’s relationship with South Korea was “ironclad and immutable”.
PANMUNJOM AFP April17, 2017 -
Did the US cyber-hack North Korea’s missile?
(Daily Mail, London), 16.04.2017 - North Korea attempted to fire a medium range missile that it introduced at a massive military parade, however, the weapon blew up roughly five seconds after being launched from a site near the port city of Sinpo.
Former British conservative Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind told the BBC on Sunday: ‘It could have failed because the system is not competent enough to make it work, but there is a very strong belief that the US -through cyber methods- has been successful in interrupting these sorts of tests and making them fail.’ Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland appeared on Fox News Sunday and declined to say whether the U.S. cyber-sabotaged North Korea’s failed missile launch.