The U.S. Secretary of State has made his fourth and final stop in Tokyo, Japan, as part of a 4 day Asia tour with North Korea being the lead agenda.
He said that the North Korean leaders would need to “come to the table in a responsible way”.
In the countries that Mr. Kerry has visited, South Korea, China and Japan, they have all agreed that a non-nuclear Korean paninsula is the way forward. Any other option would further isolate the North Korean regime’s country, said the Secretary of State in a statement.
In recent weeks Japan has deployed Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) defense missiles and has warned North Korea that it would shoot down any missiles that would threaten Japanese territory.
Japan is indeed within range of the North Korean Musudan (BM25) ballistic missiles, which have a range of 4,000km, and that have been deployed on the DPRK’s East coast.
There have generally been a few mistakes in Japan with aiports and official Japanese government Twitter accounts reporting of an ‘imminent attack’. However, the general population are calm and are doing business as usual.
The Secretary of State also re-iterated that “The US will do what is necessary to defend our allies against these provocations, but our choice is to negotiate,”.
The US, South Korea, and Japan have setup a missile defense shield uitilizing Patriot Advanced Capability 2 and 3 missiles, Aegis anti-missile capability (Aboard US, Japanese and Korean anti-air warships) and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD).
In other news, according to the South Korean Yonhap News Agency the DPRK leader, Kim Jong-Un, hasn’t been seen in 2 weeks. It is believed that he will be in public view again when on the 15th of April marks Kim-Il Sung’s birthday, which experts expect they will mark with a rocket launch, as they did in the previous year.
