North Korea signals confrontation, no signs of war preparation

SEOUL — North Korea is stepping up confrontation with the US and its allies, but officials in Washington and Seoul say they have spotted no signs Pyongyang intends to take imminent military action.

Kim Jong Un's government is likely to continue or even increase provocative steps, officials and analysts say, after it made strides in ballistic missile development, bolstered co-operation with Russia and scrapped its decades-long goal of peacefully reuniting with South Korea.

Analysts at a prominent think tank said in a report this month that Kim "has made a strategic decision to go to war", just as his grandfather did in 1950, taking advantage of a US distracted by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and doubts caused by its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But US and South Korean officials do not sense a looming war.

"While we are not seeing indications of a direct military threat at this time, we continue to monitor for the risk of (North Korea) military action against (South Korea) and Japan," a US official said.

South Korean Defence Minister Shin Won-sik this month rejected as an "excessive exaggeration" claims by some US experts that the likelihood of war on the Korean Peninsula was the highest since the Korean War, which ended in an armistice in 1953 — leaving the North and South still technically at war.

Such arguments play into the hands of North Korea's psychological warfare, Shin told a radio station.

Japan is closely following Pyongyang's rhetoric and actions, a foreign ministry spokesperson said, declining to specify whether Tokyo believed North Korea was planning some kind of military action.

'Not looking at war'

"I can rest pretty darn assured we're not looking at war," said Sydney Seiler, who retired as national