North Korea has asked embassies to consider moving staff out and warned it cannot guarantee the safety of diplomats after April 10, Britain said yesterday, amid high tension and a war of words on the Korean peninsula.
The requests come on the heels of declarations by the Government of the secretive communist state that real conflict is inevitable, because of what it terms “hostile” US troop exercises with South Korea and UN sanctions imposed over North Korea’s nuclear weapons testing.
“The current question was not whether, but when a war would break out on the peninsula,” because of the “increasing threat from the US”, China’s state news agency Xinhua quoted the North’s Foreign Ministry as saying.
It added that diplomatic missions should consider evacuation.
Britain said its embassy in Pyongyang had been told by the North Korean Government it “would be unable to guarantee the safety of embassies and international organisations in the country in the event of a conflict”.
“We believe they have taken this step as part of their continuing rhetoric that the US poses a threat to them,” Britain’s Foreign Office said.
It said it had “no immediate plans” to evacuate its embassy and accused the North Korean Government of raising tensions “through a series of public statements and other provocations”.
A Polish spokesman said Warsaw saw the latest statements by Pyongyang as “an inappropriate element of building up the pressure and we obviously think that there is no risk from outside on North Korea”. He added that the Polish embassy saw no need to move staff out.
“This question has been directed to all embassies that are on the ground in Pyongyang,” a Swedish Foreign Office official said.
Under the Vienna Convention that governs diplomatic missions, host governments are required to help get embassy staff out of the country in the event of conflict.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said North Korea had “proposed that they should consider the evacuation of employees in the increasingly tense situation”, according to a its embassy in Pyongyang.
Moscow said it was “seriously studying” the request. A statement from its foreign ministry said Russia hoped all parties would show restraint and considered “whipping up military hysteria to be categorically unacceptable”.
In a fusillade of statements over the past month, North Korea has threatened to stage a nuclear strike on the US, something it lacks the capacity to do, according to most experts, and has declared war on South Korea. Military analysts say North Korea might be able to hit some part of the US, but not the mainland and not with a nuclear weapon.
The threats against the US by North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un are “probably all bluster”, said Gary Samore, until recently the top nuclear proliferation expert on President Barack Obama’s national security staff.
The North Koreans “are not suicidal. They know that any kind of direct attack (on the US) would be the end of their country,” he added.
Yesterday, South Korean media reported that North Korea had placed two of its intermediate-range missiles on mobile launchers and hidden them on the east coast of the country in a move that could threaten Japan or US Pacific bases. The report could not be confirmed.
Speculation centred on two kinds of missiles, neither of which is known to have been tested.
One is the so-called Musudan missile that South Korea’s Defence Ministry estimates has a range of up to 3,000 kilometres.
The other is the KN-08, which is believed to be an inter-continental ballistic missile.
The North has always aggressively condemned the regular military exercises held by US forces and their South Korean allies, but its reaction to this year’s has reached a blistering new pitch.
Kim Jong-un, 30, is the third member of his dynasty to rule North Korea. He took over in December 2011 after the death of his father Kim Jong-il.