Military action against North Korea an option, US

“We’re exchanging views”, Tillerson said during his visit to the demilitarized zone on the border between two Koreas.

He said that if the DPRK conducts any provocative act to threaten South Korea and the USA forces stationed here, his country will take action against it.

There he met some of the more than 28,000 USA troops stationed on the peninsula, and toured the Joint Security Area, where North and South Korea soldiers stand facing each other.

The secretary of State reportedly did hold talks with both South Korean officials regarding the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program.

“I think it’s important to recognise that the diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of denuclearisation have failed”, he said.

“North Korea must understand that the only path to a secure, economic propitious future is to abandon its development of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction”, Tillerson said.

At the same time, the United States will likely be pushing for even stronger UN-mandated economic sanctions that may include seizure of North Korean assets overseas and debilitating trade prohibitions against North Korea that will essentially threaten its economic and possibly even regime survival.

North Korea has vowed to unleash “merciless” attacks on the United States if an aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson, in collaboration with South Korean forces, infringes on its sovereignty.

“We believe these actions are unnecessary and troubling”, Tillerson said, referring to what South Korea sees as Chinese retaliation in the form of business restrictions in response to the deployment of the missile system.

Tillerson is mid-way through a three-nation swing throgh Northeast Asia, which began in Japan and will end in China.

A former adviser on North Korea to president George W. Bush’s administration, he said: “This is now a military testing programme to acquire a proven capability”.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump took a harsher tone in condemning North Korea.

While Pyongyang isn’t one of Tillerson’s scheduled stops, it will unquestionably dominate his talks with his Japanese, South Korean and Chinese counterparts.

But is the new secretary of state, with no prior experience in government, really ready to offer new strategies on halting the North’s advances? The reclusive country said that the launches were a part of exercises targeting US military bases in Japan. Trump has long said that North Korea is China’s problem to fix. Washington, by launching military drills, wants to deter Pyongyang from its nuclear ambitions, and meanwhile, is flexing its military muscles in the region.

“The situation is already on the brink of nuclear war”, Pak Myong Ho, the chargé d’affaires at the North Korean embassy in Beijing, said.

He said it was time for a new policy on North Korea, but released no details. Washington says the maneuvers are routine and defensive.

Top candidates for the upcoming presidential election to replace her in May have all called for a review of the 2015 agreement, a move that would likely further raise tensions between Seoul and Tokyo. He also questioned the fundamentals of four decades of USA diplomacy with China.

More generally, Secretary of Defense Mattis’ first trip overseas to Korea and Japan in early February strongly reaffirmed USA commitment to its allies in Northeast Asia.