A top North Korean diplomat said Saturday that Pyongyang would be willing to meet with the Trump administration for negotiations “if the conditions are set.”

Choi Sun-hee, the top North Korean diplomat who handles relations with the U.S., spoke briefly to reporters in Beijing en route to Pyongyang. She was traveling from Norway, where she led a delegation that held an informal meeting with former U.S. officials and scholars.

Choi did not elaborate on what the North’s conditions are, but her comments raise the possibility of North Korea and the U.S. returning to negotiations for the first time since 2008, when six-nation talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program fell apart. Read more from “Delaying Marriage and Parenthood: The Consequences of ‘Emerging Adulthood'” HERE)

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North Korea on Friday accused the U.S. and South Korean spy agencies of an unsuccessful assassination attempt on leader Kim Jong Un involving biochemical weapons.

In a statement carried on state media, North Korea’s Ministry of State Security said it will “ferret out and mercilessly destroy” the “terrorists” in the CIA and South Korean intelligence agency responsible for targeting its supreme leadership.

North Korea frequently lambasts the United States and South Korea, but its accusation Friday was unusual in its detail. (Read more from “North Korea Accuses US, south Korea of Assassination Attempt” HERE)

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North Korea, feeling pressure of encroaching American and allied vessels, has now threatened to make a ghost ship of a U.S. nuclear submarine — but the warning might not be hyperbolic rhetoric.

“The moment the USS Michigan tries to budge even a little, it will be doomed to face the miserable fate of becoming an underwater ghost without being able to come to the surface,” railed propagandistic North Korean outlet, Uriminzokkiri, quoted by the Independent.

The urgent fielding of the nuclear submarine in the waters off the Korean Peninsula, timed to coincide with the deployment of the super aircraft carrier strike group, is intended to further intensify military threats toward our republic.

Announced as a routine, scheduled training exercise with ally, South Korea, President Trump sent an ‘armada’ of U.S. vessels to the waters off the Korean peninsula, which now includes the nuclear-powered U.S.S. Michigan and the U.S.S. Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group — which, as Bloomberg reports, are also accompanied by the “destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer and USS Michael Murphy and the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain.”

All of this firepower, whatever the guise under which they arrived near Pyongyang’s doorstep, has been characterized by the North as “intimidation and blackmail,” particularly given Trump’s pugnacious assertions he would not allow secretive regime to develop nuclear missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland.

Both Japan and South Korea, traditional U.S. allies in the region, continue with other allied nations to coordinate in hopes of lessening the chance Kim Jong-un would act aggressively amid stifling tensions, as Uriminzokkiri stated outright, “whether it’s a nuclear aircraft carrier or a nuclear submarine, they will be turned into a mass of scrap metal in front of our invincible military power centred on the self-defence nuclear deterrence.”

Trump recently stumped South Korea by calling for Seoul to pay up to $1 billion for its use of the THAAD missile defense system along its border with the North; but national security adviser H.R. McMaster has since insisted to his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, the U.S. would ensure its ally’s safety.

As the U.S. armada began arriving for exercises, Pyongyang test fired another ballistic missile, and although Washington reported that firing a failure — the missile ostensibly disintegrated just minutes after launch, its pieces landing in the Sea of Japan — the cloistered nation continued threats like the aforementioned.

China, North Korea’s strongest ally, has urged Pyongyang to employ discretion and caution in engaging the U.S., warning any sudden moves like firing upon the American fleet would bring the region into full-scale military conflict.

Asked about the latest test and for a general message on the topic of North Korea, Trump ominously stated, without elaborating further,

You’ll soon find out, won’t you?

Of course, with nationalist and military propaganda thoroughly inundating any discussion of the situation, a realistic picture of what could happen if and when rhetoric turns kinetic has been difficult to discern.

Reports such as those from the U.S. Naval Institute claim superiority in firepower, both defensive and offensive, should Pyongyang follow through with increasingly belligerent threats — but some analyses caution the Vinson group and accompanying ships might be capable of the destruction officials have championed.

Bloomberg, for instance, headlined an article, “Trump ‘Armada’ Sent to Deter Kim Can’t Shoot Down His Missiles,” on Tuesday — the same day the Michigan arrived in the South Korean port city of Busan to join the others.

Noted Bloomberg of the Vinson group and armada,

They aren’t equipped with the version of the Aegis surveillance system made by Lockheed Martin Corp. that can track long-range ballistic missiles or Raytheon Co.’s SM-3 interceptors that are capable of bringing down medium and longer-range ballistic missiles.

Nor are the modern Japanese Navy destroyers JS Samidare and JS Ashigara that joined the Vinson group for exercises equipped for missile defense detection or intercepts, a Japanese Navy spokesman confirmed. And the three South Korean ‘Sejong the Great’-class destroyers currently in operation don’t have ballistic missile defense capability, Tom Callender, a naval forces analyst with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said in an interview.

Further, although the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system has been placed around 35 miles from the Korean demilitarized zone, its hardware is not yet fully operational — leaving South Korea vulnerable even as its neighbor to the North specifically takes issue with that defense.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Commander Gary Ross refused to answer specifics on U.S. weapons defense capabilities, he emphasized for Bloomberg, “no single capability defends against all threats. Rather it is the employment of integrated, multi-layered land and sea-based systems that provide missile defense” — for the U.S. and its allies.

“We have ballistic missile ships in the Sea of Japan, in the East Sea, that are capable of defending against ballistic missile attacks,” Navy Admiral Harry Harris, the head of U.S. forces in Korea and the Pacific, asserted Wednesday to the House Armed Services Committee.

He added of ships escorting the Vinson group that defense of the armada would not be a question, stating,

If it flies, it will die, if it’s flying against the Carl Vinson strike group.

Defense analyst David Wright with the Union of Concerned Scientists explained that, even if Aegis-equipped vessels were present in the waters near North Korea and Japan, the U.S. would not be capable of striking down another ICBM immediately after it was launched.

“There is a misconception that if it was close enough,” a U.S. Navy BMD vessel “could shoot a missile down during boost phase. But it doesn’t have that capability,” Wright said. “During boost phase the missile is an accelerating target, and Aegis doesn’t have the maneuverability to home in on such a target.

“Similarly, it would not be able to shoot down shorter-range missiles, like the Musudan, during boost phase. You might be able to shoot it down after boost phase, but by that time North Korea would be able to get information about the most critical part of the trajectory, so that strategy is unlikely to slow” Kim’s ardent quest to develop missiles.

No matter how stridently Trump feels toward quashing North Korea’s nuclear weapons hopes, any designs the U.S. might have to depose the Kim regime will not likely see success — even if physically successful.

Business Insider pointed out, the secretive nation still considers itself under the rule of ‘forever leader,’ Kim II Sung, who died in 1994 — and North Koreans vociferously support longstanding goals of nuclear aggression against the world. (For more from the author of “North Korea Just Threatened to Sink US Nuclear Submarine” please click HERE)

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There was a moment at Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s White House briefing Monday that was significant. Asked by a reporter about North Korea’s missile launch last weekend, Spicer said the administration was aware of the launch and that “it failed.” End of story. Next question, please.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative foreign secretary in Britain, might provide an explanation for Spicer’s tight-lipped response. Rifkind told the BBC Sunday that “…there is a very strong belief that the U.S. — through cyber methods — has been successful on several occasions in interrupting these sorts of tests and making them fail.”

At present, there are no direct links to a cyber attack on North Korea from the U.S., but that hasn’t stopped media outlets from reporting the possibility of one.

American Actions

Last month, the U.S. began sending the first elements of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to South Korea, though China opposed the move. When it becomes operational will it, along with cyber attacks, be enough to deter North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un from conducting new missile tests capable of hitting the U.S. with a nuclear warhead, which he has repeatedly threatened to do? Kim has said he will conduct missile tests “weekly” in response to U.S. threats.

On a recent visit to South Korea, Vice President Mike Pence vowed that “the era of strategic patience is over,” a strategy adopted by the Obama administration to explain its long-term view on global conflict resolution. Pence added, “North Korea would do well not to test (President Trump’s) resolve — or the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region.”

How much of this is bluster on both sides no one can say for sure. After President Trump’s meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, there is some optimism that China might be able to exert sufficient pressure on its unpredictable ally to pull back from a direct confrontation with the U.S. Of greatest concern for the Trump administration, in addition to South Korean civilians who would likely suffer massive casualties should there be a North Korean invasion, are the more than 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. Kim has threatened to attack them and flood South Korea with his ground forces.

What’s the Goal?

What is our goal with North Korea? Is it regime change? If so, who and what would follow if Kim is ousted? Kim, his father and grandfather have established such an atmosphere of complete control and cult-like obedience with North Koreans who have been cut off from all outside information that it is hard to predict how the people would react. It’s a good bet political prisoners in North Korea’s prison camps would be overjoyed if the regime fell and they were set free.

Humanrights.gov estimates between “80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners and family members are detained in these camps, where starvation, forced labor, executions, torture, rape, forced abortion and infanticide are commonplace.”

Those who wish to hold off on further challenges to North Korea must ask themselves a question. Given the erratic behavior of Kim Jong-Un and his bellicose promises to strike the U.S. with a nuclear missile, is it better to take him seriously and stop him now, or wait until he has the capability to carry out his threat?

Last week, Hawaii’s House public safety committee passed a resolution calling for the state’s defense agency to repair hundreds of fallout shelters that have not been updated since the 1980s and restock them with medical supplies, food and water.

We haven’t yet reached the tension level of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which put the United States in direct confrontation with the Soviet Union and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, but the current tension between the U.S. and North Korea could quickly spiral downward.

Will the “peace through strength” doctrine of the Reagan administration, which suggested that military power could help preserve peace, work today? During the Reagan years, Soviet leaders were not unstable, as Kim Jong-Un appears to be, and a nuclear confrontation was avoided. Perhaps a demonstration of what the U.S can do with cyber warfare, a missile defense system and help from China will be enough.

One can only hope. (For more from the author of “What next with North Korea?” please click HERE)

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A day after a failed North Korean missile test, U.S. President Donald Trump had a message Monday for the North’s ruler: ‘Gotta behave.” At the same time, Vice President Mike Pence warned at the Korean Demilitarized Zone that America’s “era of strategic patience is over.”

Keeping up the verbal volleying, North Korea’s deputy U.N. ambassador accused the United States of turning the Korean peninsula into “the world’s biggest hotspot” and creating “a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment.”

Pence’s visit to the tense DMZ dividing North and South Korea came at the start of a 10-day trip to Asia and underscored U.S. commitment. It allowed the vice president to gaze at North Korean soldiers afar and stare directly across a border marked by razor wire. (Read more from “Trump Warns North Korea: ‘Gotta Behave'” HERE)

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