North Korea fired three short-range missiles from its east coast on Saturday, South Korea’s Defence Ministry said, prompting Western powers to urge Pyongyang to exercise restraint.

Launches by the North of short-range missiles are not uncommon but, after recent warnings from the communist state of impending nuclear war, such actions raise concerns about the region’s security.

“North Korea fired short-range guided missiles twice in the morning and once in the afternoon off its east coast,” an official at the South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman’s office said by telephone.

The official declined to speculate on whether the missiles had been fired as part of a drill or training exercise.

“In case of any provocation, the ministry will keep monitoring the situation and remain on alert,” he said.

A Japanese government source noted the three launches, but said none of the missiles had landed in Japan’s territorial waters, the Kyodo news agency reported.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has subsided in the past month, having run high for several weeks after the United Nations Security Council imposed tougher sanctions against Pyongyang following its third nuclear test in February.

The North had for weeks issued nearly daily warnings of impending nuclear war with the South and the United States.

The United States declined to comment directly on the reported launches but said it was monitoring the situation.

“We continue to urge North Korea to exercise restraint and take steps to improve its relations with its neighbors,” the State Department and the Pentagon said in a statement.

Britain’s Foreign Office said: “We have been clear to North Korea that its long-term interests will not be served by threatening the international community and increasing regional tensions.”

North Korea conducts regular launches of its Scud short-range missiles, which can hit targets in South Korea.

It conducted a successful launch of a long-range missile last December, saying it had put a weather satellite into orbit. The United States and its allies denounced the launch as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead.

During the weeks of high tension, South Korea reported that the North had moved missile launchers into place on its east coast for the possible launch of a medium-range Musudan missile. The Musudan has a range of 3,500 km, putting Japan in range and possibly the U.S. South Pacific island of Guam.

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The United States and China agreed on Saturday to make a joint effort to push for the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, following weeks of bellicose rhetoric from North Korea and rising tensions in northeast Asia.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met China’s top leaders in a bid to persuade them to exert pressure on North Korea, whose main diplomatic supporter is Beijing, to scale back its belligerence and, eventually, return to nuclear talks.

Before travelling to Beijing for the first time as secretary of state, Kerry had made no secret of his desire to see China take a more active stance towards North Korea, which in recent weeks has threatened nuclear war against the United States and South Korea.

Kerry and China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, said both countries supported the goal of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

“We are able, the United States and China, to underscore our joint commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner,” Kerry told reporters, standing next to Yang at a state guesthouse in western Beijing.

“We agreed that this is critically important for the stability of the region and indeed for the world and for all of our nonproliferation efforts.”

But North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it described on Friday as its “treasured” guarantor of security.

Yang said China’s stance on maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula was clear and consistent.

“We maintain that the issue should be handled and resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation. To properly address the Korea nuclear issue serves the common interests of all parties. It is also the shared responsibility of all parties,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.

“China will work with other relevant parties, including the United States, to play a constructive role in promoting the six-party talks and balanced implementation of the goals set out in the September 19 joint statement of 2005.”

At a news conference in Seoul on Friday and in a U.S.-South Korean joint statement issued on Saturday, Kerry signaled the U.S. preference for diplomacy to end the tension, but stressed North Korea must take “meaningful” steps on denuclearization.

The United States and its allies believe the North violated the 2005 aid-for-denuclearization deal by conducting a nuclear test in 2006 and pursuing a uranium enrichment program that would give it a second path to a nuclear weapon in addition to its plutonium-based program.

“CONSTRUCTIVE” TALKS

As the North’s main trading partner, financial backer and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, China has a unique ability to use its leverage against the impoverished, isolated state, Kerry said in Seoul before leaving for Beijing.

Kerry earlier in the day characterized his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping as “constructive and forward-leaning”, though he did not elaborate.

Beijing, which sided with North Korea in the 1950-53 civil war against the U.S.-backed South, has been reluctant to apply pressure on Pyongyang, fearing the instability that could result if the North were to implode and send floods of refugees into China.

It has also looked askance at U.S. military drills in South Korea.

Xinhua said in a commentary that Washington had itself been “fanning the flames” on the Korean peninsula with its shows of force.

“It keeps sending more fighters, bombers and missile-defense ships to the waters of East Asia and carrying out massive military drills with Asian allies in a dramatic display of preemptive power,” it said.

Chinese state television quoted Premier Li Keqiang as telling Kerry that rising tensions on the Korean peninsula were in nobody’s interests, in apparent reference to both Washington and Pyongyang to dial down the war of words.

“All sides must bear responsibility for maintaining regional peace and stability and be responsible for the consequences,” the television report paraphrased Li as saying.

“Disturbances and provocation on the peninsula and regionally will harm the interests of all sides, which is like lifting a rock only to drop it on one’s feet.”

Still, U.S. officials believe China’s rhetoric on North Korea has begun to shift, pointing to a recent speech by China’s Xi in which – without referring explicitly to Pyongyang – he said no country “should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain”.

Kerry’s visit to Asia, which will include a stop in Tokyo on Sunday, takes place after weeks of shrill North Korean threats of war since the imposition of new U.N. sanctions in response to its third nuclear test in February.

North Korean television made no mention of Kerry’s visit and devoted most of its reports to preparations for Monday’s celebrations marking the birth date of state founder Kim Il-Sung.

These included a numerous floral tributes and grandiose flower show, foreign visitors seeing the sights of the capital ahead of the festivities and the unveiling of a monument in a provincial town.

But Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party’s newspaper, issued a fresh denunciation of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, saying: “The outbreak of nuclear war has now become a fait accompli, owing to the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces.

“If the enemies dare provoke (North Korea) while going reckless, it will immediately blow them up with an annihilating strike with the use of powerful nuclear means.”

However, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting a government source, said North Korea had not moved any of its mobile missile launchers for the past two days after media reports that as many as five missiles had been moved into place on the country’s east coast.

Yonhap said there had been no signs of any movement by the mobile launchers since Thursday, “or that missile launches are imminent”.

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North Korea announced plans this morning to restart a mothballed nuclear reactor that has been closed since 2007, but emphasized it was seeking a deterrent capacity, rather than repeating recent threats to attack South Korea and the United States.

The state-owned KCNA news agency said North Korea would restart all nuclear facilities for both electricity and military uses.

The announcement came amid soaring tensions on the Korean Peninsula as the United States bolstered its forces in the region after a series of threats by Pyongyang to attack U.S. bases in the Pacific and to invade South Korea.

North Korea, one of the most isolated and unpredictable states in the world, conducted its third nuclear test in February but is believed to be some years away from developing nuclear weapons, although it claims to have a deterrent.

A speech by the North’s young leader Kim Jong-un, delivered on Sunday but published in full by KCNA on Tuesday, appeared to dial down the prospects of a direct confrontation with the United States as he stressed that nuclear weapons would ensure the country’s safety as a deterrent.

“Our nuclear strength is a reliable war deterrent and a guarantee to protect our sovereignty,” Kim said. “It is on the basis of a strong nuclear strength that peace and prosperity can exist and so can the happiness of people’s lives.”

Kim’s speech, delivered to the central committee meeting of the ruling Workers Party of Korea, appeared to signal a small shift from threats against South Korea and the United States, but it was some distance from any kind of end to the crisis.

“The fact that this (speech) was made at the party central committee meeting, which is the highest policy-setting organ, indicates an attempt to highlight economic problems and shift the focus from security to the economy,” said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

But if Pyongyang follows through with its plan to restart the nuclear facilities, it will have longer-term security implications for the region.

Reactivating the aged Soviet-era reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear plant will produce plutonium, a tested path to acquire more fissile material than a uranium enrichment program.

It was unclear how quickly the Yongbyon plant, whose cooling tower was destroyed as part of a de-nuclearization deal, would take to restart and it was impossible to verify whether it was still connected to North Korea’s antiquated electricity grid at all.

“It was a reactor that was nearing obsolescence with a cooling tower that wasn’t functioning properly when it was blown up. It could mean they’ve been rebuilding quite a few things,” said Yoo Ho-yeol, North Korea specialist at Korea University in Seoul.

ENRICHMENT

The move to restart the reactor comes as a big blow to China’s stated aim of restarting de-nuclearization talks on the Korean peninsula, prompting a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing to express regret at the decision.

As well as restarting the 5MW reactor at Yongbyon, the North’s only known source of plutonium for its nuclear weapons program, KCNA said a uranium enrichment plant would also be put back into operation.

The nuclear plant’s output would be used to solve what KCNA termed an “acute shortage of electricity” and to bolster “the nuclear armed force”.

After being hit with U.S. sanctions for conducting the February nuclear test and what it has viewed as “hostile” military drills being staged by Seoul and Washington in the South, Pyongyang had threatened a nuclear strike on the United States, missile strikes on its Pacific bases and war with South Korea.

Washington, which has said it has not seen any evidence of hostile North Korean troop moves, deployed a warship off the Korean coast overnight.

The United States earlier bolstered forces staging joint drills with South Korea with Stealth fighters and has made bomber overflights in a rare show of strength.

Much of the rhetoric that has come from Pyongyang in recent weeks has been a repeat of previous bouts of anger, but the length and intensity has been new, leading to concerns that the tensions could spiral into clashes.

In Washington, the White House has said the United States takes North Korea’s war threats seriously. But White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday: “I would note that despite the harsh rhetoric we are hearing from Pyongyang, we are not seeing changes to the North Korean military posture, such as large-scale mobilizations and positioning of forces.”

A U.S. defense official said on Monday the USS McCain, an Aegis-class guided-missile destroyer used for ballistic missile defense, was positioned off the peninsula’s southwestern coast.

It was not immediately clear where the ship was on Tuesday.

In Pyongyang, the party congress meeting and a subsequent assembly of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament reiterated the usual anti-American rhetoric and criticized South Korea, but the mood appeared to have changed.

The pariah state has once again started emphasizing economic development as it shifts to the major April 15 celebration of the birth of its founder, Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current ruler.

For the young Kim, it appears that cementing control of the party and state had now taken top priority as well as improving living standards in a country whose economy is smaller than it was 20 years ago, according to external assessments.

Kim appointed a handful of personal confidants to the party’s politburo, further consolidating his grip on power in the second full year of his reign.

Former premier Pak Pong-ju, a key ally of the leadership dynasty, was re-appointed to the post from which he was fired in 2007 for failing to implement economic reforms.

Pak, believed to be in his 70s, is viewed as a key confidant of Jang Song-thaek, the young Kim’s uncle and also a protege of Kim’s aunt. Pak is viewed as a pawn in a power game that has seen Jang and his wife re-assert power over military leaders.

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South Korean soldiers keep watch on the north at the “Truce Village” of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone, which separates the two Koreas, in Paju, north of Seoul February 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

South Korea will strike back quickly if the North stages any attack on its territory, the new president in Seoul warned this morning, as tensions ratcheted higher on the Korean peninsula amid shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang and the U.S. deployment of radar-evading fighter planes.

North Korea says the region is on the brink of a nuclear war in the wake of United Nations sanctions imposed for its February nuclear test and a series of joint U.S. and South Korean military drills that have included a rare U.S. show of aerial power.

North Korea said on Saturday it was entering a “state of war” with South Korea in response to what it termed the “hostile” military drills being staged in the South. But there have been no signs of unusual activity in the North’s military to suggest an imminent aggression, a South Korean defense ministry official said last week.

“If there is any provocation against South Korea and its people, there should be a strong response in initial combat without any political considerations,” President Park Geun-hye told the defense minister and senior officials at a meeting on Monday.

The South has changed its rules of engagement to allow local units to respond immediately to attacks, rather than waiting for permission from Seoul.

Stung by criticism that its response to the shelling of a South Korean island in 2010 was tardy and weak, Seoul has also threatened to target North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and to destroy statues of the ruling Kim dynasty in the event of any new attack, a plan that has outraged Pyongyang.

Seoul and its ally the United States played down Saturday’s statement from the official KCNA news agency as the latest in a stream of tough talk from Pyongyang.

North Korea stepped up its rhetoric in early March, when U.S. and South Korean forces began annual military drills that involved the flights of U.S. B-2 stealth bombers in a practice run, prompting the North to puts its missile units on standby to fire at U.S. military bases in the South and in the Pacific.

The United States also deployed F-22 stealth fighter jets on Sunday to take part in the drills. The F-22s were deployed in South Korea before, in 2010.

On its part, North Korea has cancelled an armistice agreement with the United States that ended the Korean War and cut all hotlines with U.S. forces, the United Nations and South Korea.

Park’s intervention came on the heels of a meeting of the North’s ruling Workers Party Central Committee where leader Kim Jong-un rejected the notion that Pyongyang was going to use its nuclear arms development as a bargaining chip.

“The nuclear weapons of Songun Korea are not goods for getting U.S. dollars and they are … (not) to be put on the table of negotiations aimed at forcing the (North) to disarm itself,” KCNA news agency quoted him as saying.

At the meeting, Kim appointed a handful of personal confidants to the party’s politburo, further consolidating his grip on power in the second full year of his reign.

Pyongyang took part in nuclear disarmament talks for five years aimed at paying it off in return for abandoning its atomic weapons program. Those talks fell apart in 2008. Some experts say the talks gave the North grounds to pursue a highly enriched uranium program that took it closer to owning a working arsenal.

Songun is the Korean word for the “Military First” policy preached by Kim’s father who used it to justify the use of the impoverished state’s scare resources to build a 1.2-million strong army and a weapons of mass destruction program.

White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said North Korea’s announcement that it was in a state of war followed a “familiar pattern” of rhetoric.

China has repeatedly called for restraint on the peninsula.

However, many in South Korea have regarded the North’s willingness to keep open the Kaesong industrial zone, located just a few miles (km) north of the heavily-militarized border and operated jointly by both sides, as a sign that Pyongyang will not risk losing a lucrative source of foreign currency by mounting a real act of aggression.

The Kaesong zone is a vital source of hard currency for the North and hundreds of South Korean workers and vehicles enter daily after crossing the armed border. It was still open on Monday despite threats by Pyongyang to shut it down. Closure could also trap hundreds of South Korean workers and managers of the more than 100 firms that have factories there.

The North has previously suspended operations at the factory zone at the height of political tensions with the South, only to let it resume operations later.

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Despite official denials of their existence, North Korea’s political prison camps have been in operation for six decades, long enough for generations to have been born and raised within their electrified fences. In all that time, no one born inside the camps had ever escaped — until Shin Dong-hyuk crawled over the body of a dead companion and though a hole in the fence in 2005.

Veteran foreign correspondent Blaine Harden told Shin’s story on the front page of the Washington Post in 2008, hoping his harrowing tale would alert American readers largely ignorant of the camps’ existence. “Shin’s story is so powerful and has so many cinematic elements to it that it’s very effective in catching people’s interest,” Harden says. “It became clear that his story was a way of reaching people who don’t normally pay attention to foreign affairs or to North Korea.”

That initial article grew into the bestselling book “Escape From Camp 14,” which recounts Shin’s life of forced labor and abuse at the hands of camp guards and his own family. It wasn’t until they’d met more than a dozen times that Shin was able to reveal his deepest secret, however: his complicity in the execution of his mother and brother.

Following that confession, Harden was forced to examine Shin’s story in a new light. “As I thought it through,” he says, “it increased his credibility from my point of view. There was no reason for him to tell this story that made him look so bad. And there’s the evidence of the scars on his body, which are not faint etchings that you need a microscope to see; they’re overwhelming, ghastly disfigurements of his body.”

Ideally, Harden says, accounts like those in his book will increase international pressure on North Korea to close the camps, which recent satellite imagery suggests are expanding. “I’m not optimistic that the camps are going to disappear anytime soon,” he admits. “But knowledge is better than ignorance, and Shin feels like all the misery that he went through and all the guilt that he carried has not been for nothing.”

If you go:

Blaine Harden

Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.
Philadelphia Central Library
1901 Vine St.
Free, 215-567-4341
www.freelibrary.org

Wednesday, 6 p.m.
United Nations Association of New York
Institute of International Education
809 United Nations Plaza, Kaufman Center
$15, 212-907-1353
www.unanyc.org

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North Korea said on Saturday it was entering a “state of war” with South Korea, its latest bout of angry rhetoric directed at Seoul and Washington, but the South brushed off the statement as little more than tough talk.

The North also threatened to shut down an industrial zone it operates jointly with the South near the heavily armed border between the two sides if Seoul continued to say the complex was being kept running for money.

The two Koreas have been technically in a state of war for six decades under a truce that ended their 1950-53 conflict. Despite its threats, few people see any indication Pyongyang will risk a near-certain defeat by re-starting full-scale war.

“From this time on, the North-South relations will be entering the state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly,” a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

KCNA said the statement was issued jointly by the North’s government, ruling party and other organizations.

There was no sign of unusual activity in the North’s military to suggest an imminent aggression, a South Korean defense ministry official said.

The North has been threatening to attack the South and U.S. military bases almost on a daily basis since the beginning of March, when U.S. and South Korean militaries started routine drills that have been conducted for decades without incident.

Many in the South have regarded the North’s willingness to keep open the Kaesong industrial zone, located just a few miles (km) north of the border, as a sign that Pyongyang will not risk losing a lucrative source of foreign currency by mounting a real act of aggression.

The Kaesong zone is a vital source of hard currency for the impoverished state and hundreds of South Korean workers and vehicles enter daily after crossing the armed border.

“If the puppet traitor group continues to mention the Kaesong industrial zone is being kept operating and damages our dignity, it will be mercilessly shut off and shut down,” KCNA quoted an agency that operates Kaesong as saying in a statement.

The threat to shut it down could sharply escalate tensions because it would suspend a symbolic joint project run by the rivals. It could also trap hundreds of South Korean workers and managers of the 123 firms that have factories there.

The North has previously suspended operations at the factory zone at the height of political tensions with the South, only to let it resume operations later.

The project has been kept running despite the North’s move on Wednesday to cut off a military hotline used to process the hundreds of workers and vehicles that cross the Demilitarized Zone border.

“We have been exercising extreme restraint considering the plight of medium and small companies whose livelihood depends on the Kaesong industrial project as an immediate shutdown will drive them to bankruptcy and people jobless,” KCNA quoted the agency as saying.

The South’s Unification Ministry, which handles political ties with the North, said earlier in the day that the Kaesong industrial park was operating as normal with workers and vehicles crossing the border both says.

“North Korea’s statement today (on entering a state of war) … is not a new threat but is the continuation of provocative threats,” a ministry statement said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Friday signed off on an order putting its missile units on standby to attack U.S. military bases in the South and the Pacific, after the United States flew two nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula in a rare show of force.

U.S. officials said the B-2 bombers were on a diplomatic sortie aimed at reassuring allies South Korea and Japan and were also aimed at trying to nudge Pyongyang back to dialogue, although there was no guarantee Kim would get the message as intended.

The South Korean government brushed off the North’s latest statement on entering a state of war, saying there was nothing fresh in it to cause greater alarm. South Koreans went about with daily lives as they have done through March under the North’s constant threat of attack.

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, center, visits the Korean People’s Army Unit 641. Credit: Reuters/KCNA

Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communication with the South because war could break out at “any moment”, it said Wednesday, days after warning the United States and South Korea of a nuclear attack.

The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to “hostile” military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.

The North has already stopped responding to calls on the hotline to the U.S. military that supervises the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Red Cross line that has been used by the governments of both sides.

“Under the situation where a war may break out at any moment, there is no need to keep North-South military communications which were laid between the militaries of both sides,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.

“There do not exist any dialogue channel and communications means between the DPRK and the U.S. and between the North and the South.”

Despite the shrill rhetoric, few believe North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), will risk starting a full-out war.

North and South Korea are still technically at war anyway after their 1950-53 civil conflict ended with an armistice, not a treaty, which the North says it has since torn to pieces.

The “dialogue channel” is used on a daily basis to process South Koreans who work in the Kaesong industrial project where 123 South Korean firms employ more than 50,000 North Koreans to make household goods.

About 120 South Koreans are stationed at Kaesong at any one time on average.

It is the last remaining joint project in operation between the two Koreas after South Korea cut off most aid and trade in response to Pyongyang’s shooting of a South Korean tourist and the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel blamed on the North.

Kaesong is one of North Korea’s few hard currency earners, producing $2 billion a year in trade with the South, and Pyongyang is unlikely to close it except as a last resort.

The North’s military spokesman representing its “supreme command” did not mention Kaesong, which has suffered temporary shutdowns before.

The South’s government said it would take steps to ensure the safety of the workers at Kaesong. It did not elaborate.

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That’s it. I’m convinced.

The 1997-98 Chicago Bulls are going to overthrow Kim Jong-un and take over North Korea within the next five months. (For the record: Jordan as president, Pippen as VP, Luc Longley as CIA head and Joe Kleine as speaker of the house.)

Two weeks ago Dennis Rodman was “touring” the People’s Republic with the Harlem Globetrotters (wow, that’s still fun to write) and now we learn that a young Kim Jong-un took a photograph with former Bulls small forward Toni Kukoc years ago. Kukoc seemed VERY defensive when asked about the photo (likely taken in France in the ’90s when the Bulls were touring there in the preseason).

“It’s Paris, the McDonald’s tournament, we’re world champions,” Kukoc told ESPNChicago.com. “Every place you went, people were trying to take pictures. What am I supposed to say? I don’t really know what to say. I don’t remember what I had for lunch today and I can remember that? It ended up a crazy thing.

“I consider myself pretty well-traveled but I don’t know at least 50 percent of the countries and I’m supposed to know some kid who (was going to) take over his dad’s dictatorship?” Kukoc said. “I don’t think if there were seven bodyguards around him with guns I wouldn’t have noticed.” 

It’s pretty obvious by now that the ’98 Bulls are just roping in Kim Jong-un (Rodman saying he’s his friend) and the U.S. media (Kukoc’s deny, deny, deny strategy) while this whole time there’s an “Argo”-like plot (or at least an episode of “Looney Tunes” when Bugs Bunny dresses up as the hot girl rabbit) being hatched.

We can now all expect a title like “Penetra-Bull: How a former basketball dynasty invaded and overthrew a Stalinist dictatorship” to win motion picture of the year in 2039.

Sapp fatigued with Patriots talk

Speaking of Stalinist dictatorships, Bill Belichick’s name was being tossed about on NFL Network Tuesday night as former Patriots GM Scott Pioli sat down with NFL Red Zone spaz Scott Hanson. Warren Sapp had no idea his microphone was on when he said this over the NFL Net airwaves:

“It’s the same f—ing spew we had (Mike) Lombardi doing,” Sapp whispered in the creepiest way possible. “The f—ing Bill Belichick f—ing angle.”

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  Warren Sapp forgets to turn off microphone

Matt Burke is sports editor and a columnist at Metro Boston. Follow him on Twitter: @BurkeMetroBOS

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