SEOUL, South Korea (Dispatches) -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Tuesday threatened a forceful response if North Korea carries out its first nuclear test explosion in nearly five years as she traveled to Seoul to meet with South Korean and Japanese allies and discuss the escalating standoff.
U.S. and South Korean officials have said North Korea is all but ready to conduct another detonation at its nuclear testing ground in the northeastern town of Punggye-ri, which last hosted a test in September 2017, when it claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb designed for its intercontinental ballistic missiles.
While the Biden administration has vowed to push for additional international sanctions if North Korea goes on with the nuclear test, the prospects for meaningful new punitive measures are unclear with the United Nations Security Council divided over Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
“Any nuclear test would be in complete violation of UN Security Council resolutions. There would be a swift and forceful response to such a test,” Sherman said, following a meeting with South Korea Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong.
Her remarks were followed by a joint air power demonstration, adding to simmering tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The maneuvers, which involved 20 warplanes including F-35A stealth fighter jets over the West Sea, came a day after Washington and Seoul jointly fired eight surface-to-surface missiles off South Korea’s east coast.
Sherman’s trip to Asia came after North Korea fired a salvo of eight ballistic missiles into the sea Sunday, possibly setting a new high in single-day launches, extending a streak in weapons tests this year that also included the country’s first demonstrations of ICBMs since 2017.
The tests came after the U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan concluded a three-day naval drill with South Korea in the Philippine Sea on Saturday, apparently their first joint drill involving a carrier since November 2017, as the countries move to upgrade their military exercises.
North Korea has long condemned the allies’ combined military exercises as invasion rehearsals and often countered with its own missile drills, including short-range launches in 2016 and 2017 that simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean ports and U.S. military facilities in Japan.
Following the latest North Korean launches in response to the drills, the United States conducted separate joint missile drills with Japan and South Korea, which they said were aimed at displaying their response capability.