UN slams North Korea’s missile launch

Tensions have escalated over North Korean moves to accelerate its weapons development. The missile, with a range of 800 km is long enough to hit any part of North Korea.

Trump met his national security team before the dinner, sat through the meal while the action was carried out and briefed by Defence Secretary James Mattis afterwards, CNN reported.

North Korea was at the top of the agenda at the summit despite being overshadowed by a missile strike on an airbase in Syria.

Centrist presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo has been closing the gap with Moon in the polls, a sign South Koreans believe a tough stance on North Korea remains necessary. Kaspersky said the addresses used by attackers were carefully concealed by routing their signals through countries such as France, South Korea and Taiwan, but one fateful error allowed researchers to detect the North Korean signal, according to United Press International.

Initial U.S. and South Korean assessments had indicated it was an advanced KN-15 medium-range missile, whose first known test by North Korea was in February.

The North, who had home advantage and are ranked 10th in the world by Federation Internationale de Football Association to the South’s 17th, were favourites to win.

Gordon Chang, a Daily Beast columnist and author of “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On The World”, said in an emailed statement to Fox News Friday that the US strike on the Syrian airfield “tells North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un that he must now heed American military power, something that he probably dismissed before”.

A Chinese fighter plane has been spotted on a Chinese-held island in the South China Sea, the first such sighting in a year and the first since Trump took office, a US think tank reports.

U.S. war analysts claim the attack proves the Trump administration is “willing to do military action”. The move away from the doctrine was largely the result of cuts to military spending and insufficient capability to carry out two simultaneous ground wars, such as the U.S. did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry called the North’s latest missile launch a “reckless provocation” that posed a threat to global peace, while Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said his country lodged a strong protest over the launch. Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense said late Thursday that the country was making further moves to strengthen trilateral military partnerships with Washington and Tokyo to counter Pyongyang’s growing missile threats.

Beijing, North Korea’s largest military and trade partner, has shown increasing annoyance with Pyongyang.

Japan, together with the US and South Korea, tightened sanctions in December 2016, following North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests.

“Swaggering as a superpower, the USA has been picking only on countries without nuclear weapons and the Trump administration is no exception”, the foreign ministry spokesman said, according to KCNA. A response could come in the form of a “precision strike to destroy only the military bases of the US and its vassal forces”, the ministry said, in reference to Japan and South Korea.

“Apparently Trump still pins his hope on China”, he said.

China is North Korea’s economic lifeline and as such enjoys more leverage over its maverick neighbour than any other country.

The Trump administration has been hoping to convince China to step up pressure on the reclusive North Korea government to curtail its nuclear program.