Forces ‘put on highest alert’ says North Korea

Analysts say a direct North Korean attack is extremely unlikely, especially during joint US-South Korean military drills that end on April 30, although there is some worry about a provocation after the training ends.

The rival Koreas have had several bloody naval skirmishes in disputed Yellow Sea waters since 1999. In November 2010 a North Korean artillery strike on a South Korean island killed two marines and two civilians. A suspected North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship earlier that same year, killing 46 South Korean sailors.

North Korea, angry over routine US-South Korean drills and recent UN sanctions punishing it for its February 12 nuclear test, has vowed to launch a nuclear strike against the United States and repeated its nearly 20-year-old threat to reduce Seoul to a “sea of fire”.

Despite the rhetoric, outside weapons analysts have seen no proof that North Korea has mastered the technology needed to build a warhead small enough to mount on a missile.

Yesterday, the North Korean army’s Supreme Command said it will take “practical military action” to protect national sovereignty and its leadership in response to what it called US and South Korean plots to attack.

The statement, carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, cited the participation of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in South Korea-US drills.

North Korea’s field artillery forces – including strategic rocket and long-range artillery units that are “assigned to strike bases of the US imperialist aggressor troops in the US mainland and on Hawaii and Guam and other operational zones in the Pacific as well as all the enemy targets in South Korea and its vicinity” – will be placed on “the highest alert from this moment,” the statement said.

The North’s recent threats are seen partly as efforts to strengthen internal loyalty to young leader Kim Jong Un and to build up his military credentials.