North Korea threatens military escalation as clock ticks on year-end deadline

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has a message for President Donald Trump and the United States: The clock is ticking, and a bomb is about to explode.

There are seven weeks until North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un is scheduled to deliver a keynote New Year’s Day speech. That will come a day after his self-imposed year-end deadline expires for the United States to come up with new proposals to restart nuclear talks.

On Wednesday — with Washington transfixed on the House impeachment inquiry — North Korea significantly raised the stakes, making an implicit threat to resume long-range missile or nuclear tests. In an official statement, the North said it felt “betrayed” by a U.S. decision to continue with joint air drills with South Korea, calling it an “undisguised breach” of an agreement made between Kim and President Trump in Singapore last year.

As a result, North Korea said it no longer felt bound by previous commitments. That could signal plans to resume nuclear or long-range missile tests.

“The U.S. is not accepting with due consideration the year-end time limit that we set out of great patience and magnanimity,” the statement from the country’s State Affairs Commission said.

"We, without being given anything, gave things the U.S. president can brag about but the U.S. side has not yet taken any corresponding step," it added. "Now, betrayal is only what we feel from the U.S. side."

Trump has repeatedly boasted that North Korea has stopped conducting nuclear or long-range missile tests under his watch, although it has conducted about a dozen shorter-range ballistic missile tests since April. But Pyongyang says Trump has reneged on a promise to end joint military exercises with Seoul.

Relations between the two sides deteriorated sharply after a failed summit in Hanoi in February. Two months later, Kim threatened to take his country on a "new path" unless the United States changed its approach to the talks.

North Korea appears to want sanctions relief and security guarantees — some way of feeling that the regime would not suffer the same fate as Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi or Iraq’s Saddam Hussein if it scaled back its nuclear program.

If it doesn't get what it wants from Trump, and soon, it may be about to dial up the heat.

"At present, when one party backpedals on its commitments and unilaterally takes hostile steps, there is neither reason nor any excuse for the other party to keep itself bound to its commitments. What's more, there is no sufficient time left," the North's statement said, vowing to answer dialogue with dialogue and "recourse to force in kind."

South Korea says it is taking the threat seriously but insists there is still time to save the day.

Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said he believed the United States and North Korea would return to the negotiating table before the end of the year.

"If they miss this opportunity, the situation and the environment will get more difficult, and it will become more difficult for us to solve the issues," he said in an interview.

Talks between the two sides in Stockholm ended in October with North Korean delegation officials angrily denouncing their American counterparts. Swedish efforts to revive that process have foundered.

Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper said he took it seriously when any foreign country or leader says something but added that his department's job was "to retain our readiness, deter conflict and if, for some reason, conflict happens, be prepared to fight and win."

"Talks about talks" are underway, Esper said Wednesday en route to South Korea, adding that the best path forward was through a "political arrangement."

Pessimism is rising among the North Korea-watching community of policy experts and analysts. They see the prospect of an escalation in tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.

Robert Carlin, a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, said he believed the polarized political atmosphere in Washington limited U.S. negotiators' room to maneuver.

"Do you know how hard it is to pull together a major diplomatic initiative in seven weeks? Do you know how hard it is when the president is moving into impeachment? In Washington, we're seeing the most poisonous atmosphere, so that no matter what the president proposes, it will be torn to shreds," he said in a lecture in Seoul on Tuesday.

If the North Korean leader announces "extremely negative measures" in his New Year's speech, "I cannot see us responding in anything other than a very stern, escalatory way," he said.

"My concern," he added, "is the North Koreans are going to miscalculate."

Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, said he also believes North Korea will take some “tough” steps early next year — possibly a satellite launch or an intercontinental ballistic missile test.

But Lankov said North Korea would probably hold back from a “dramatic” gesture — mostly to avoid a setback in relations with China, whose role as North Korea’s main economic lifeline has grown since sanctions were imposed.

Meanwhile, Kim Yeon-chul, South Korea’s unification minister, will travel to Washington and Los Angeles next week as Seoul tries to reprise its role as peacemaker.

But he faces an uphill battle: North Korea has shut off dialogue with the South, and Washington sees Seoul as much less central to the process than it did a year ago. The country has even been replaced as go-between by Sweden.

Still, Kim says he will bring ideas to Washington. He wants the two sides to focus on confidence-building measures; for example, by easing travel restrictions on U.S. citizens of Korean origin who still have relatives in the North.

He suggested they might consider an “Olympics armistice” next year, in which North Korea suspends its missile tests and the United States suspends joint military exercises with South Korea. Japan — which also had deep concerns over North Korea’s military and nuclear capabilities — is host of the 2020 Summer Games.

His main message, though: Progress on North Korean denuclearization has to go hand-in-hand with progress in inter-Korean relations, and the three countries, North and South Korea and the United States, all need to work on improving relations.

"So if all of these three relations could make some positive progress and create a virtuous cycle, then we can make successful progress with North Korean denuclearization," he said.

The Washington Post’s Min Joo Kim contributed to this report.