Barack Obama’s words of warning as he visits Korean DMZ for the first time

The North Korean military has already transported the main body of the rocket
to a site in the far north west of the country in preparation.

It said it would fire the missile at some point from April 12 to 16.

The latest food deal was struck less than a month ago after direct talks
between the US and North Korea, and it is not clear if any food has been
shipped. Two weeks ago, the two sides were still finalising the logistics.

At the time of the deal, the US hailed it as a breakthrough and said it could
be the first step on the road to reconciliation. Those hopes now appear to
have been dashed, once again.

“It shows yet again that North Korea is profoundly unserious about the
commitments it makes to limit, suspend or abandon its nuclear or ballistic
missile programs,” wrote John Bolton, America’ss former ambassador to the
United Nations, in the New York Post.

Mr Obama was in South Korea ahead of a 53-nation Nuclear Security Summit that
will open today. Iran, Syria and North Korea are all likely to be on the
agenda, although the North has said that any reference to its nuclear
programme in a communique from the summit will be regarded as “a declaration
of war”.

China has urged the summit not to stray off topic by discussing North Korea,
but Mr Obama said Beijing had to reconsider its continual appeasement of the
rogue state.

“My suggestion to China is that how they communicate their concerns to North
Korea should probably reflect the fact that the approach they have taken
over the last several decades has not led to a fundamental shift in North
Korea’s behaviour,” he said.

Earlier in the day, the US president visited American soldiers guarding the
border between the two countries and told them that they were at “freedom’s
frontier”. He added that staring into North Korea was like looking into a
“time warp”.

Asked about Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s 27-year-old or 28-year-old leader, Mr
Obama said it was unclear how much control he had over his country. The
younger Kim, who succeeded his father, Kim Jong-il, at the end of last year,
has spent much of his time visiting the North Korean army, perhaps trying to
shore up the military’s support.

“It is not clear who is calling the shots in North Korea,” Mr Obama said.

Mr Obama’s visit to the DMZ coincided with the end of the 100-day mourning
period for Kim Jong-il, who died in December. Tens of thousands of people
crammed into Kim Il-sung Square in central Pyongyang to mark the occasion.

Mr Obama follows in the footsteps of George W Bush who visited the DMZ in
February 2002, weeks after he branded North Korea part of the “Axis of
Evil”.

Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan also both visited during their terms in office,
with the former describing the area, which was left as a buffer between the
two Koreas after the end of the Korean War in 1953, as “the scariest place
on earth”.

Meanwhile, to mark the opening of the summit, a 42lb consignment of enriched
uranium, large enough to make a nuclear weapon, was transported from Ukraine
to Russia. It was the final shipment of a two-year programme to denuclearise
the former Soviet state that has seen more than 440lbs removed from Ukraine
and reprocessed.

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