The Telegraph reports: There are clear signs that China is losing patience with North Korea, America’s former top diplomat in Asia has said.

For several decades, China has been North Korea’s closest ally, largest trade partner and primary source of aid.

However, Kurt Campbell, the former head of the State department in Asia, said there are signs that a relationship once described by Chairman Mao to be “as close as lips and teeth” is wearing thin.

“There is a subtle shift in Chinese foreign policy. Over the short to medium term, that has the potential to affect the calculus in north east Asia,” Mr Campbell said at a forum at John Hopkins university.

“You have seen it at the United Nations (Security Council). We have seen it in our private discussions and you see it in statements in Beijing,” he added.

Mr Campbell, who left the State department in February to found his own consultancy firm, was one of the architects of the US diplomatic and military “pivot” towards Asia.

Dr. Patrick M. Cronin writes: The Korean Peninsula is on a knife’s edge, one fateful step from war. While Koreans are accustomed to periodic spikes in tensions, the risk of renewed hostilities appears higher than at any time in the past 60 years, when American, North Korean, and Chinese generals signed an armistice agreement. Far more than 1 million people died in the Korean War, with at least that many troops and civilians injured over the course of the three-year campaign.

The exact leadership dynamics at play in Pyongyang remain mysterious, but the domestic survival of the Kim family dynasty appears to hinge on maintaining a credible nuclear and missile threat — backed up by a local great power, China. To achieve the former, Kim Jong Un appears willing to risk the latter. His regime’s unrelenting verbal threats are intended to rally domestic support, and its reckless brinksmanship is aimed at forcing the outside world to back down and back off. In the past days and weeks — adding to the tension created by its recent nuclear and missile tests — Pyongyang has severed a hotline with Seoul, renounced the 1953 armistice, conducted cyberattacks, and, against its own financial interests, closed down the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which is the only economic thread holding together relations with the South.

There is no single red line that, when crossed, would trigger war, but the potential for miscalculation and escalation is high. North Korea has a penchant for causing international incidents — in 2010 alone it used a mini-submarine to sink the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan and shelled South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island. The brazen and unprovoked killing of military personnel and civilians shocked many South Koreans, some of whom faulted then-President Lee Myung Bak for a tepid response. The new president, Park Geun Hye (South Korea’s “Iron Lady”) is determined not to echo that weakness and has vowed a strong response to any direct provocation. Meanwhile, the United States, via the annual Foal Eagle and Key Resolve exercises, has many troops, ships, and planes on maneuvers in the region and, as an additional show of resolve, flew long-range B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri to Korea and dispatched F-22 fighter jets as well.

The desire to show strength, the fear of looking weak, and the presence of tons of hardware provides more than enough tinder that a spark could start a peninsula-wide conflagration. [Continue reading…]

BBC News reports: North Korea has shifted a missile with “considerable range” to its east coast, South Korea’s foreign minister says.

Kim Kwan-jin played down concerns that the missile could target the US mainland, and said the North’s intentions were not yet clear.

Pyongyang earlier renewed threats of a nuclear strike against the US, though its missiles are not believed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The US is responding to North Korea by moving missile defence shields to Guam.

The Pentagon said the shield on its Pacific island territory would be ready within weeks, adding to warships already sent to the area.

The North has previously named Guam among a list of possible targets for attack that included Hawaii and the US mainland.

Japanese and South Korea reports had suggested the missile being moved by the North was a long-range one with a capability of hitting the US west coast.

However, experts believe the North’s most powerful rocket, which it test-fired last December, has a range of 6,000km (3,700 miles) and can reach no further than Alaska.

First, a family-favorite, “We are ready for nuclear war,” followed by the six-year-old Ko Pyong Sim performing “Footsteps.”

Joel Wit writes: [I]n November 2010, senior North Korean Foreign Ministry officials made it very clear that they were willing to relinquish thousands of fuel rods in their possession that could have been used by the reactor, rods that could help produce as many as eight nuclear bombs. That would have been a first step toward permanently disabling the facility, making sure the reactor would never again be a threat. Of course, the North Koreans wanted compensation — standard practice in the international nuclear fuel industry — and they wanted more than the rods were worth. But that was clearly their opening position. The offer was repeated during meetings in March 2011 in Berlin and once again in Pyongyang at the end of that year.

Each time, the North Korean proposal was dutifully reported to the Obama administration in briefings for the White House, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community. The Lee Myung-bak administration was familiar with the offer, as they would have been intimately involved in any effort to shut Yongbyon down because Lee’s predecessor had been willing to pay for the rods to take them off North Korea’s hands.

The North Korean initiative was duly noted, but the United States and South Korea failed to take advantage of the opportunity to ensure that North Korea wasn’t able to restart the reactor and turn the rods into new nuclear bombs. [Continue reading…]

Bloomberg reports: North Korea’s military escalated its threats, citing a law ratified this week as authorizing plans for “counter-actions” against U.S. aggression, including use of a “cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike.”

Kim Jong Un’s regime, which hasn’t demonstrated it has a nuclear weapon or a missile capable of delivering one to the U.S. mainland, didn’t elaborate on the armaments it claimed to have in a statement today by a military spokesman, which was distributed by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The warning was presented as a response to what North Korea called an “ever-escalating U.S. hostile policy,” citing moves including the use of long-range bombers in a U.S.-South Korea exercise being conducted this month. While tensions have escalated over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and United Nations sanctions against it, U.S. officials have emphasized this week that they have seen no unusual troop movements by North Korea.

The Wall Street Journal reports: After a high-visibility display of military power aimed at deterring North Korean provocations, the White House is dialing back the aggressive posture amid fears that it could inadvertently trigger an even deeper crisis, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. is putting a pause to what several officials described as a step-by-step plan the Obama administration approved earlier this year, dubbed “the playbook,” that laid out the sequence and publicity plans for U.S. shows of force during annual war games with South Korea. The playbook included well-publicized flights in recent weeks near North Korea by nuclear-capable B-52 and stealth B-2 bombers, as well as advanced F-22 warplanes.

The U.S. stepped back from the plans this week, as U.S. officials began to worry that the North, which has a small nuclear arsenal and an unpredictable new leader, may be more provoked than the U.S. had intended, the officials said.

“The concern was that we were heightening the prospect of misperceptions on the part of the North Koreans, and that that could lead to miscalculations,” a senior administration official said.