Tag Archives: North Korea

North Korea tests another ICBM, claims all of U.S. in strike range

Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Hwasong-14 is pictured during its second test-fire in this undated picture provided by KCNA in Pyongyang on July 29, 2017. KCNA via Reuters

By Jack Kim and Idrees Ali

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea said on Saturday it had conducted another successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that proved its ability to strike America’s mainland, drawing a sharp warning from U.S. President Donald Trump and a rebuke from China.

 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally supervised the midnight launch of the missile on Friday night and said it was a “stern warning” for the United States that it would not be safe from destruction if it tries to attack, the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

North Korea’s state television broadcast pictures of the launch, showing the missile lifting off in a fiery blast in darkness and Kim cheering with military aides.

“The test-fire reconfirmed the reliability of the ICBM system, demonstrated the capability of making a surprise launch of the ICBM in any region and place any time, and clearly proved that the whole U.S. mainland is in the firing range of the DPRK missiles, (Kim) said with pride,” KCNA said.

DPRK is short for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The launch comes less than a month after the North conducted its first ICBM test in defiance of years of efforts led by the United States, South Korea and Japan to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

The North conducted its fourth and fifth nuclear tests last year and has engaged in an unprecedented pace of missile development that experts said significantly advanced its ability to launch longer-range ballistic missiles.

“By threatening the world, these weapons and tests further isolate North Korea, weaken its economy, and deprive its people,” Trump said in a statement. “The United States will take all necessary steps to ensure the security of the American homeland and protect our allies in the region.”

China, the North’s main ally, said it opposed North Korea’s “launch activities that run counter to Security Council resolutions and the common wishes of the international community.”

A foreign ministry statement added: “At the same time, China hopes all parties act with caution, to prevent tensions from continuing to escalate, to jointly protect regional peace and stability.”

Early on Saturday, the United States and South Korea conducted a live-fire ballistic missile exercise in a display of firepower in response to the missile launch, the U.S. and South Korean militaries said.

ALL OPTIONS

The Trump administration has said that all options are on the table to deal with North Korea. However it has also made clear that diplomacy and sanctions are its preferred course.

The foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and the United States held separate phone calls and agreed to step up strategic deterrence against the North and push for a stronger U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution, the South and Japan said.

South Korea has also said it will proceed with the deployment of four additional units of the U.S. THAAD anti-missile defense system that President Moon Jae-in has earlier delayed for an environmental assessment.

Moon, who has pledged to engage the North in dialogue but was snubbed by Pyongyang recently over his proposal to hold cross-border military talks, said Seoul will also seek to expand its missile capabilities.

China’s Foreign Ministry expressed serious concern about the announced move on THAAD, saying it will only make things more complex. Beijing opposes the missile defense system because its power radars can look deep into China.

“We strongly urge South Korea and the United States to face squarely China’s concerns about its interests, stop the relevant deployment process and withdraw the related equipment,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The missile test came a day after the U.S. Senate approved a package of sanctions on North Korea, Russia and Iran. Trump is ready to sign the bill, the White House said on Friday.

The sanctions are likely to include measures aimed at Chinese financial institutions that do business with North Korea. Washington has also proposed a new round of U.N. sanctions on North Korea following its July 4 ICBM test.

“RELIABLE ICBM BY YEAR-END”

In Friday’s test, North Korea’s Hwasong-14 missile, named after the Korean word for Mars, reached an altitude of 3,724.9 km and flew 998 km for 47 minutes and 12 seconds before landing in the waters off the Korean peninsula’s east coast, KCNA said.

Western experts said the flight was an improvement on North Korea’s first test of an ICBM.

The flight demonstrated successful stage separation, reliability of the vehicle’s control and guidance to allow the warhead to make an atmospheric re-entry under conditions harsher than under a normal long-range trajectory, KCNA said.

The trajectory was in line with the estimates given by the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese militaries, which said the missile was believed to be an ICBM-class rocket.

Independent weapons experts said the launch demonstrated many parts of the United States were within range if the missile had been launched at a flattened trajectory.

The U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists said its calculations showed the missile could have been capable of going as far into the United States as Denver and Chicago.

David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a blog post that if it had flown on a standard trajectory, the missile would have had a range of 10,400 km (6,500 miles).

Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated a range of at least 9,500 km and said the window for a diplomatic solution with North Korea “is closing rapidly.”

“The key here is that North Korea has a second successful test in less than one month,” he said. “If this trend holds, they could establish an acceptably reliable ICBM before year’s end.”

(The story fixes garble in para 18)

(Additional reporting by Christine Kim in Seoul, Kaori Kaneko, Elaine Lies and William Mallard in Tokyo, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, David Brunnstrom in Washington and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

North Korea fires missile into sea off east coast in unusual night test

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the test of a new-type anti-aircraft guided weapon system organised by the Academy of National Defence Science in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) May 28, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Friday in an unusual late-night test launch from its northern Jangang province that landed in the sea off its east coast, possibly in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, South Korea and Japan said.

The launch took place at 11:41 p.m. (1441 GMT), an official at South Korea’s Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The U.S. Defense Department also confirmed the launch as a ballistic missile, saying it was making further assessments.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in called a National Security Council meeting for 1 a.m. Saturday, his office said, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also said a National Security Council meeting would be convened.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the North Korean missile flew for about 45 minutes.

(Reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul, William Mallard in Tokyo and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

North Korea hacking increasingly focused on making money more than espionage: South Korea study

A projection of cyber code on a hooded man is pictured in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

By Christine Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea is behind an increasingly orchestrated effort at hacking into computers of financial institutions in South Korea and around the world to steal cash for the impoverished country, a South Korean state-backed agency said in a report.

In the past, suspected hacking attempts by North Korea appeared intended to cause social disruption or steal classified military or government data, but the focus seems to have shifted in recent years to raising foreign currency, the South’s Financial Security Institute (FSI) said.

The isolated regime is suspected to be behind a hacking group called Lazarus, which global cybersecurity firms have linked to last year’s $81 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh central bank and the 2014 attack on Sony’s Hollywood studio.

The U.S. government has blamed North Korea for the Sony hack and some U.S. officials have said prosecutors are building a case against Pyongyang in the Bangladesh Bank theft.

In April, Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab also identified a hacking group called Bluenoroff, a spin off of Lazarus, as focused on attacking mostly foreign financial institutions.

The new report, which analyzed suspected cyber attacks between 2015 and 2017 on South Korean government and commercial institutions, identified another Lazarus spinoff named Andariel.

“Bluenoroff and Andariel share their common root, but they have different targets and motives,” the report said. “Andariel focuses on attacking South Korean businesses and government agencies using methods tailored for the country.”

Pyongyang has been stepping up its online hacking capabilities as one way of earning hard currency under the chokehold of international sanctions imposed to stop the development of its nuclear weapons program.

Cyber security researchers have also said they have found technical evidence that could link North Korea with the global WannaCry “ransomware” cyber attack that infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries in May.

“We’ve seen an increasing trend of North Korea using its cyber espionage capabilities for financial gain. With the pressure from sanctions and the price growth in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum – these exchanges likely present an attractive target,” said Luke McNamara, senior analyst at FireEye, a cybersecurity company.

North Korea has routinely denied involvement in cyber attacks against other countries. The North Korean mission to the United Nations was not immediately available for comment.

ATM, ONLINE POKER

The report said the North Korean hacking group Andariel has been spotted attempting to steal bank card information by hacking into automated teller machines, and then using it to withdraw cash or sell the bank information on the black market. It also created malware to hack into online poker and other gambling sites and steal cash.

“South Korea prefers to use local ATM vendors and these attackers managed to analyze and compromise SK ATMs from at least two vendors earlier this year,” said Vitaly Kamluk, director of the APAC research center at Kaspersky.

“We believe this subgroup (Andariel) has been active since at least May 2016.”

The latest report lined up eight different hacking instances spotted within the South in the last few years, which North Korea was suspected to be behind, by tracking down the same code patterns within the malware used for the attacks.

One case spotted last September was an attack on the personal computer of South Korea’s defense minister as well as the ministry’s intranet to extract military operations intelligence.

North Korean hackers used IP addresses in Shenyang, China to access the defense ministry’s server, the report said.

Established in 2015, the FSI was launched by the South Korean government in order to boost information management and protection in the country’s financial sector following attacks on major South Korean banks in previous years.

The report said some of the content has not been proven fully and is not an official view of the government.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in SINGAPORE; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Michael Perry)

Japan joins U.S. in imposing new sanctions on North Korea

FILE PHOTO: Men walk past a street monitor showing news of North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile test in Tokyo, Japan, July 4, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan will freeze the assets of five organizations and nine individuals linked to North Korea, including two Chinese entities, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday, outlining new sanctions against the isolated state.

Japan’s announcement came just hours after the U.S. Senate also voted for new sanctions on North Korea, which followed U.S. media reports this week that intelligence officials had assessed that Pyongyang would be able to field a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by next year, earlier than previously thought.

The U.S. sanctions also include measures aimed at Chinese financial institutions, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

China’s foreign ministry denounced Japan’s decision as unacceptable and “wrong.”

“We are resolutely opposed to any country implementing any unilateral sanctions outside the UN Security Council framework, especially those targeting Chinese enterprises and individuals,” ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing.

“If Japan insists on doing this it will create major political obstacles for cooperation between China and Japan on the Korean Peninsula issue,” he added.

Kishida told reporters that given the increasing threat posed by North Korea’s missiles and the fact that no concrete proposals have been made to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted decades ago by agents from the North, the steps had to be taken.

“Given that we can’t expect meaningful dialogue, increasing pressure on them is essential,” he said.

Japan will be taking steps to freeze the assets of five groups, including two from China, as well as nine individuals, Kishida said.

He added that no further details would be made available until various “administrative procedures” had been carried out, but Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that the groups had “engaged in activities prohibited by a U.N. Security council resolution.”

Kishida said Japan had been in contact with key allies such as the United States and South Korea, but gave no further details.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and a series of missile launches.

The United States is seeking further sanctions after North Korea tested a missile this month that was believed to be an ICBM. U.S. officials said on Tuesday they had seen increased activity at a site in the western city of Kusong that could be preparations for another missile test within days.

(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko in TOKYO and Philip Wen in BEIJING, writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Britain and Australia urge China to do more on North Korea threat

North Korean soldiers watch the south side as the United Nations Command officials visit after a commemorative ceremony for the 64th anniversary of the Korean armistice at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas July 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jung Yeon-Je/Pool

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Britain and Australia urged China on Thursday to do more to persuade North Korea to drop its nuclear and missile programs.

Earlier this month North Korea, which has warned Australia could be the target of a strike, said it had conducted its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, which experts say could reach Alaska.

The United States and other countries have indicated frustration that China, North Korea’s sole major ally, has not done more to rein in the regime of Kim Jung Un.

“With international influence comes responsibility. It is now for Beijing to use the influence it has over the North Korean regime to get it to abandon its program,” British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told reporters in Sydney.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and two long-range missile launches.

Fallon said North Korea continues to receive help in developing its missile and nuclear ambitions as he called on enforcement of the sanctions.

North Korea’s missile and nuclear program was a central element of the fourth annual meeting of Australia and British ministers.

“We are seeing a level of uncertainty that we have not witnessed in a very long time,” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told reporters in Sydney.

“It is more important than ever before for like-minded countries to find common cause in supporting that international rules-based order.”

Earlier, Bishop told the Australian Broadcasting Corp’s Radio National that China “has much more leverage over North Korea than it claims.”

“The export relationship with North Korea, the provision of remittance to workers, the foreign investment flows, the technology flows – these are all in China’s hands,” she said.

The United States could impose new sanctions on Chinese firms doing business with Pyongyang, senior U.S. officials have said.

China has rejected the criticism and urged a halt to what it called the “China responsibility theory”, saying all parties needed to pull their weight.

(Reporting by Swati Pandey; Additional reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Richard Pullin and Neil Fullick)

U.S. likely to target more Chinese entities over North Korea ‘fairly soon’: official

FILE PHOTO: North Korean soldiers chat as they stand guard behind national flags of China (front) and North Korea on a boat anchored along the banks of Yalu River, near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, June 10, 2013. REUTERS/Jacky Chen

By David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New U.S. sanctions aimed at curbing North Korean’s weapons programs, including measures aimed at Chinese financial institutions, can be expected “fairly soon,” a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

Asked when such sanctions could be expected and whether they could come within 30 days, Susan Thornton, the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told a Senate sub-committee hearing:

“We have been working on coming up with a new list of entities that we think are violating … I think you’ll see something fairly soon, yes.”

Thornton said the United States would prefer to cooperate with China in going after entities doing business with North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions.

“But we are perfectly prepared to act on our own,” she said.

“I think the Chinese are now very clear that we’re going to go after Chinese entities if need be, if we find them to be in violation, and if the Chinese feel they can’t cooperate in going after those targets.”

Thornton also said Washington was still considering whether to add North Korea back to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, from which it was removed in 2008 in exchange for progress in denuclearization talks.

“We are reviewing that issue right now … We are looking at the issue of designation,” she said, adding that she could not give a time frame for a decision.

Thornton said the United States had offered customs assistance to China to help stem illicit trade over its border with North Korea. “We are working on that with them, as are some of our like-minded allies in the region,” she said.

She said sanctions had affected North Korea’s ability to get materials for its weapons programs, but had not slowed its missile testing, as a lot of the production for this program was now indigenous.

“We are continuing to talk to China about that,” she said. “We’re continuing to try to impinge on sources of, particularly, hard currency, financing, but … it’s become harder and harder to stop this kind of activity in North Korea.”

U.S. officials said on Tuesday they had seen increased activity at a site in the western city of Kusong that could be preparations for another missile test within days.

U.S. officials told Reuters this month the Trump administration could impose new sanctions on small Chinese banks and other firms doing business with Pyongyang within weeks.

China’s Ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai said on Tuesday secondary sanctions on Chinese firms were “unacceptable” and had “severely impaired” cooperation on North Korea.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Fairy tales overcome nightmares at South Korea’s militarized border town

Visitors are seen at a shopping mall near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, South Korea, July 16, 2017. Picture taken on July 16, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

By Hyunjoo Jin and Haejin Choi

SEOUL (Reuters) – A half-hour’s drive north of Seoul, along a highway lined with barbed wire, lie two shopping malls the size of several football stadiums, a stone’s throw from the world’s most militarized border.

The malls are in the city of Paju, gateway to the U.N. truce village of Panmunjom, where military officers from the combatants of the 1950-53 Korean war discuss armistice matters — when the two sides are on speaking terms, which they aren’t these days.

“Fairy tales come true in Paju”, is the advertising lure from the Korean Tourism Board. But it was nightmares that were all too true here during the Korean war, when Paju featured some of its fiercest battles. Paju is home to the country’s only “enemy’s cemetery”, where the remains of Chinese and North Korean soldiers are buried.

That’s all but forgotten history now. On the rooftop of the Lotte Premium Outlet, children and their parents can view North Korea across the Imjin River through binoculars. The mall also features a merry-go-round, cinema, and a mini-train.

At Shinsegae Paju Premium Outlet, about a dozen children jump and scream around a fountain inside the mall on a sizzling, July summer day. Just a couple miles away is a village modeled after France’s tourism center of Provence, where restaurants, bakeries and clothing shops are decorated like a children’s playbook.

Elsewhere in Paju, kids carved wood to make Pinocchio dolls at a museum, while adults tasted wine made of meoru, a Korean wild grape, at a farm.

Paju, indeed, shows little signs of the tensions that have arisen since North Korea marked the U.S. July 4th holiday with a successful launch of what it said was an intercontinental ballistic missile. The missile test prompted the United States and South Korea this month to conduct air force bomber exercises in the skies near here.

LITTERING LAND MINES

But at Paju’s Provence Village, Kim Ki-deok, a 41-year-old office worker from south of Seoul and father of a 4-year-old boy, said he doesn’t feel any more danger from being close to the border.

“If North Korea really wants, they can shoot missiles far away,” said Kim. “I feel refreshed and would like to come here again.”

The sense of insouciance can even be seen at the U.S. military’s Camp Bonifas on the outskirts of town, home to a three-hole golf course that Sports Illustrated once called the “world most dangerous golf course” because of the Korean War vintage land mines littering the area.

The Korean War, in which the United States fought alongside South Korea and China with the North, ended in a truce that has yet to be replaced by a peace agreement and has left the two sides technically at war.

It means South Koreans have long grown accustomed to living in a doomsday scenario, one that includes up to 10,000 artillery guns pointed toward the South and capable at any moment, in the words of North Korea’s propaganda machine, of turning Seoul into a “sea of fire” and a “pile of ashes.”

For 30-year-old Park Chol-min, it’s nothing more than empty threats.

“It’s just a show or performance. I think North Korea has a lot more to lose than to gain by turning Seoul into a sea of fire,” said the video game producer from Seoul, visiting the Shinsegae mall with his girlfriend to buy her a birthday gift.

DEFENSE MECHANISM

Paju stepped up North Korea-related tourism in the 2000s, when liberal governments launched a “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with North Korea. Foreigners and locals flocked to Panmunjom to see stony-faced North Korean soldiers on guard and an underground tunnel built by the North, and to Imjingak, which houses the Bridge of Freedom, where prisoners of war were traded at the end of the war.

The tourism push took a huge leap late in 2011, when two massive premium outlets run by South Korean retail giants Shinsegae and Lotte opened. More than 12 million visitors went to the two malls last year — more than Seoul’s population of 10 million.

It was not long after the malls opened, though, when North Korea dramatically stepped up the pace of missile and nuclear tests under Kim Jong Un, who took power in Pyongyang when his father Kim Jong-il died in December 2011.

“The tests have not dented visitor interest at all,” said a Paju city official in charge of tourism, who asked not to be named. “It has become just part of a daily life, although it is sad to say so.”

Normalizing the North Korean threat is part of a “defense mechanism” for South Koreans, says Kwak Keum-joo, a psychology professor at Seoul National University.

“I feel anxious about North Korea when I travel overseas. Once I return to Korea, I forget it,” Kwak said.

That’s not so easy for 74-year-old Woo Jong-il, who lives in a small village of Manu-ri, just south of the Imjin river that divides the two Koreas.

Woo built a bunker in his backyard, one of several residents in Manu-ri who did so in the early 1970s, when bullets fired from North Korea wounded several in his village and damaged a house next door.

“I don’t think this is obsolete even now,” he said, showing a visitor around a dark basement shelter just big enough to accommodate his seven family members.

“I feel anxious. How can I not be? We are at the front so we can be victims. If the relationship with the North worsens anytime, this bunker makes me feel safe.”

(Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang,; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Bill Tarrant)

North Korea could carry out missile test soon: U.S. officials

A North Korean flag flutters on top of a tower at the propaganda village of Gijungdong in North Korea, in this picture taken near the truce village of Panmunjom, South Korea July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. officials said on Tuesday they have seen increased North Korean activity that could be preparations for another missile test within days.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that over the past week intelligence has spotted equipment, possibly for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) or an intermediate-range missile, moving into a site in the western city of Kusong.

Earlier this month, reclusive North Korea, which regularly threatens to destroy the United States and South Korea, said it had conducted its first test of an ICBM and mastered the technology needed to deploy a nuclear warhead via the missile.

Pyongyang’s state media said the test verified the atmospheric re-entry of the warhead, which experts say may be able to reach the U.S. state of Alaska.

However, the vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff recently said the July 4 test stopped short of showing North Korea has the ability to strike the United States “with any degree of accuracy.”

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIAL), the Pentagon spy agency, has assessed that North Korea will be able to field a nuclear-capable ICBM by next year, earlier than previously thought.

According to two U.S. officials, however, some other analysts who study North Korea’s missile program do not agree with the DIAL assessment.

“DIA and the South Koreans tend to be at the leading edge of estimates on North Korea’s military programs, and that’s understandable,” said one of the U.S. officials, who both agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity. “There is no question that the DPRK has moved further and faster with its effort to develop a reliable, nuclear-capable ICBM that can be built in quantity, but there are still doubts about whether it can cross that threshold in a year.”

DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

A second U.S. official familiar with the science of ICBMs said, also on the condition of anonymity, that North Korea still has not demonstrated the ability to design and build nuclear warheads small enough to be delivered on its long-range missiles and tough enough to survive re-entry into the atmosphere.

A third official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said that even if Pyongyang develops a workable ICBM from its “tinker-toy mix of old Russian missiles,” it would pose a threat to the United States and its allies only if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s regime is suicidal.

The North has made no secret of its plans to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the United States and has ignored calls to halt its weapons programs, even from its lone major ally, China. It says the programs, which contravene U.N. Security Council resolutions, are necessary to counter U.S. aggression.

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Wednesday he was aware of the reports of a possible new North Korean missile test.

U.N. resolutions were clear when it came to North Korean missile launches and China opposed any move that ran counter to them, Lu told reporters.

“We hope all sides can bear in mind the broad situation of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and exercise restraint,” he added.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and John Walcott; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by John Walcott and Nick Macfie)

U.S. says progress with China on N.Korea U.N. sanctions, true test is Russia

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley directs comments to the Russian delegation at the conclusion of a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the recent ballistic missile launch by North Korea at U.N. headquarters in New York.

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States is making progress in talks with North Korean ally China on imposing new United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang over its latest missile test, but Russia’s engagement will be the “true test,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said on Tuesday.

The United States gave China a draft resolution nearly three weeks ago to impose stronger sanctions on North Korea over the July 4 missile launch. Haley had been aiming for a vote by the 15-member Security Council within weeks, senior diplomats said.

“We’re constantly in touch with China … Things are moving but it’s still too early to tell how far they’ll move,” Haley told reporters, adding that she was pleased with China’s initial response to the U.S. proposal because it showed “seriousness.”

“We know that China’s been sharing and negotiating with Russia, so as long as they are doing that, we’re going to continue to watch this closely to make sure it is a strong resolution,” she said.

China’s U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi told reporters: “We are making progress, it requires time, but we’re working very hard.”

Traditionally, the United States and China have negotiated sanctions on North Korea before formally involving other council members, though diplomats said Washington informally keeps Britain and France in the loop. Along with Russia, those five countries are veto-wielding Security Council members.

“The true test will be what (the Chinese) have worked out with Russia (and whether) Russia comes and tries to pull out of that,” said Haley.

The United States and Russia have waged rival campaigns at the Security Council over the type of ballistic missile fired by North Korea. Western powers have said it was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), while Russia said the missile fired was only medium-range.

Diplomats say China and Russia only view a long-range missile test or nuclear weapon test as a trigger for further possible U.N. sanctions.

“Everyone that we have dealt with acknowledges that it’s an ICBM. Whether they are willing to put it in writing or not is going to be the real question,” Haley said.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and two long-range missile launches.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been frustrated that China has not done more to rein in North Korea and senior officials have said Washington could impose new sanctions on Chinese firms doing business with Pyongyang.

When asked how long Washington was willing to negotiate with China at the United Nations before deciding to impose its own secondary sanctions, Haley said: “We’re making progress … We’re going to see what the situation is.”

“We want China and every other country to see it as serious and we’re going to keep moving forward that way,” she said.

China’s Ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai said on Tuesday that Beijing objected to secondary sanctions. In June, the United States blacklisted two Chinese citizens and a shipping company for helping North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

“Such actions are unacceptable. They have severely impaired China-U.S. cooperation on the Korean nuclear issue, and give rise to more questions about the true intention of the U.S.,” he told the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington.

(Additional reporting by David Brunstrom in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish)

No Korean military talks after North snubs South’s call

A concrete border is seen as a South Korean soldier stands guard at the truce village of Panmunjom, South Korea July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s proposed military talks aimed at easing tension between the two Koreas planned for Friday failed to happen after the North snubbed the call, a setback for new President Moon Jae-in’s hopes for dialogue.

The North has remained silent on the South Korean proposal, made on Monday, for talks on ways to avoid hostilities along their heavily fortified border.

Moon took office in May pledging to engage the North in dialogue, as well as to bring pressure on it to impede its nuclear and missile programs.

The proposal for talks came after the North said it conducted its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4, and said it had mastered the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on it.

South Korean defense ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told a briefing the military talks proposed for Friday were practically impossible as the North had not responded.

“It is an urgent needed task for peace and stability on the Korean peninsula to restore dialogue in the military area and to ease military tension between the South and the North,” he said.

Moon said the proposal for talks still stood and he urged the North to respond.

It was the first formal overture by South Korea since cross-border ties broke down early last year under the government of Moon’s predecessor, who imposed unilateral sanctions on the North for its nuclear tests and missile launches.

The North has conducted its fourth and fifth nuclear tests and a quick succession of missile-related activities since the beginning of 2016, after leader Kim Jong Un had pledged to improve ties with the South in a New Year’s address.

The South had proposed talks to discuss ways to end activities on the border that have fueled tension.

By that, South Korea usually refers to loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts by both sides, while North Korea wants an end to joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel)