South Korea is forming a hit squad to take out North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. 
 
 Following North Korea’s successful test of its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb earlier this month, the South Korean military has announced it’s creating an assassination unit called the Spartan 3000 to carry out night raids in North Korea. Once in the North, the group could be tasked to kill the leadership — primarily Kim. It could go in early and preempt a North Korean attack on the South, or fight in the middle of a war. 
 
 South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo told lawmakers of the government’s intention to build the “decapitation unit” on September 4, the day after the recent nuclear test. The administration wants the team ready by the end of the year. 
 
 The unit is central to a longstanding plan to fight North Korea if necessary — called “Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation.” In September 2016, the North tested its fifth nuclear weapon, which at that point was the largest bomb it had detonated. Two days later, the South Korean military noted it had the option to kill North Korean leadership, including Kim. 
 
 South Korea’s previous president, the hawkish Park Geun-hye, planned to have the unit ready by 2019. But it appears the administration of the dovish Moon Jae-in wants it ready to go much sooner — likely because Moon needs to show he’s pushing back on a more aggressive North. 
 
 “I think this may be more in response to domestic pressure on the Moon administration to reintroduce US tactical nuclear weapons than an escalation with North Korea,” Troy Stangarone, an expert at the Korea Economic Institute, told me in an interview. Last week, Song floated that idea in front of political leaders, but Moon has repeatedly said he doesn’t want those weapons in South Korea. 
 
 “This has been getting quite a bit of play over the last few days, so [the administration] need[s] to be seen as taking strong steps to defend South Korea in the absence of a nuclear option,” Stangarone continued. “This is about deterrence.” 
 
 The announcement seems to have the approval of former South Korean military leaders. “The best deterrence we can have, next to having our own nukes, is to make Kim Jong Un fear for his life,” Shin Won-sik, a South Korean three-star general who retired in 2015, told the Times. 
 
 The Spartan 3000 will be a modern version of a ragtag assassination team the South Koreans created in the 1960s. Back then, the South Korean military secretly trained prisoners and others to go into North Korea and kill then-leader Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather. 
 
 But the new unit is officially recognized by the Moon government. And it’s not the only military moves this administration has made in recent days. 
 
 South Korea is preparing for an unlikely war 
 
 “We cannot rely only on our ally for our security,” Moon said in a nationally televised speech on August 15, alluding to the United States. “When it comes to matters related to the Korean Peninsula, our country has to take the initiative in resolving them.” 
 
 And take the initiative he has. On September 5, Moon told Trump that South Korea wants to build a nuclear submarine. Seoul also wants to increase the payload on its missiles so they can do more damage, and has temporarily deployed the last four THAAD missile defense systems that it bought from the US. And Moon plans to buy more military equipment from the United States now that President Donald Trump has approved the sales. 
 
 The New York Times also reports that South Korea has three ongoing war plans: “Kill Chain,” in which South Korea would preemptively launch missiles at North Korea if it detected Pyongyang was about to shoot projectiles of its own at the South; “Korea Air and Missile Defense,” which aims to take out any rockets shot by North Korea’s artillery force, which is the largest in the world; and “Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation,” where the goal is to destroy the area in Pyongyang Kim hides in to avoid assassination. 
 
 South Korea is naturally worried about what North Korea can do. In case of a war, South Korea would be one of Pyongyang’s first targets. Seoul, South Korea’s capital with a metro area that hosts around half of the country’s 50 million people, is only about 35 miles from the inter-Korean border. That’s near where around 70 percent of North Korea’s ground forces are stationed. 
 
 One war game convened by the Atlantic back in 2005 predicted that a North Korean attack would kill 100,000 people in Seoul in the first few days alone. Others put the estimate even higher. A war game mentioned by the National Interest predicted Seoul could “be hit by over half-a-million shells in under an hour.” 
 
 Critics may still see Moon as a dove on North Korea. But that description doesn’t seem to fit after some of these latest militaristic moves — which Moon wants to do to stave off a North Korean attack. ||||| Washington (CNN) A North Korean official reaffirmed Pyongyang's commitment to developing a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching "all the way to the East coast of the mainland US," on Monday, telling CNN that the rogue nation is currently not interested in diplomacy with the US until it achieves that goal. 
 
 The comments offer a sobering challenge to the US and the Trump administration which has offered mixed messages regarding diplomatic efforts with North Korea. 
 
 White House chief of staff John Kelly said last week that Americans should be concerned about North Korea's ability to reach the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile, cryptically telling reporters that if the threat grows "beyond where it is today, well, let's hope that diplomacy works." 
 
 Significantly, Kelly noted that Pyongyang "is developing a pretty good nuclear re-entry vehicle." 
 
 For a missile to successfully strike a target it would have to re-enter the earth's atmosphere without breaking up. 
 
 Kelly's comments seem to indicate that the US believes that North Korea is close to achieving what would be a key breakthrough for their missile program. 
 
 The North Korean official told CNN that two additional steps are needed to achieve its goal of a reliable ICBM. 
 
 One step is an above-ground nuclear detonation , like the kind North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho threatened at the United Nations last month when he suggested leader Kim Jong Un was considering detonating "an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb " over the Pacific after Trump threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea. 
 
 The other step is the "testing of a long-range ICBM capable of reaching Guam - and even further," the official said. 
 
 Last week, North Korean state media renewed a threat to launch missiles toward the US territory of Guam, warning that "reckless moves" by the US would compel Pyongyang to take action. 
 
 North Korea first said it was examining a plan to target the Pacific island in August after Trump warned the isolated regime would "face fire and fury like the world has never seen" following a US intelligence assessment that North Korea had produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead. 
 
 Both steps are necessary for the DPRK to send that "clear message" to the Trump administration that it possesses an effective nuclear deterrent, the North Korean official said on Monday. 
 
 The official added that one or both of these tests could possibly be timed to coincide with the US-South Korea joint naval drills, which began Monday and will last for ten days, or could possibly coincide with Trump's visit to Asia next month. 
 
 Joint military exercises are particularly infuriating to Pyongyang. The North Korean government views them as a dress rehearsal for an invasion -- even as the US insists they are purely defensive in nature. 
 
 The US will practice evacuating civilians from South Korea in its annual Courageous Channel training exercise later this month -- a routinely scheduled exercise that "prepares service members and their families to respond to a wide range of crisis management events such as non-combatant evacuation and natural or man made disasters," according to US Forces Korea. 
 
 Asked Monday if his possible visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) next month will provoke North Korea Trump said he would "take a look at that" but added he "hadn't heard in terms of provoking." 
 
 On Sunday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said his diplomatic efforts will continue as long as they possibly can despite the saber-rattling on both sides of the Pacific. 
 
 "Those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops," Tillerson said on CNN's "State of the Union." 
 
 Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of the House Foreign Affairs Committee told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday that he believes the US should continue to pursue diplomacy with Pyongyang but ultimately, must prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the US. 
 
 "I don't believe we can live with that possibility," he said. 
 
 North Korean anger over US 'decapitation' plan 
 
 A North Korean diplomat publicly expressed anger on Monday over reports that hackers gained access to a US-South Korean plan to "decapitate" the regime's leadership. 
 
 North Korea's deputy UN Ambassador warned that the plan is "dangerous" and an insult to the nation. 
 
 CNN has reported that the North Korea hackers stole classified military documents from a South Korean Defense ministry database in September 2016, according to Rhee Cheol-hee, a member of South Korea's National Assembly. He said the documents stolen included the South Korea-US wartime operational plan and a document that includes procedures to "decapitate" the North Korean leadership. 
 
 North Korea's deputy Ambassador Kim In Ryong told a UN committee meeting on nuclear issues that "what is more dangerous is that the US dared to formulate a plan and stage the exercise of decapitation operation and secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership." 
 
 "This is an unbearable insult to the supreme dignity of the DPRK and it arouses extreme anger from our people and service personnel," Ryong said. 
 
 The North Korean UN diplomat also fiercely defended Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests. 
 
 Why North Korea wants nukes and missiles North Korea has long maintained it wants nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to deter the United States from attempting to overthrow the regime of Kim Jong Un. Pyongyang looks at states such as Iraq -- where Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the United States -- and Libya -- its late leader, Moammar Gadhafi, gave up his nuclear ambitions for sanctions relief and aid, only to be toppled and killed after the United States intervened in his country's civil unrest -- and believes that only being able to threaten the US mainland with a retaliatory nuclear strike can stop American military intervention. Many experts say they believe North Korea would not use the weapons first. Kim values his regime's survival above all else and knows the use of a nuclear weapon would start a war he could not win, analysts say. 
 
 "Unless the hostile policy and the nuclear threat of the US is thoroughly eradicated, we will never put our nuclear weapons and ballistic rockets on the negotiation table under any circumstance and will never flinch even an inch from the road we have chosen, upholding the line of simultaneously developing the two fronts, the everlasting banner in safeguarding the peace," Ryong said. 
 
 "This year, we have passed the final gate of completing the state nuclear force and thus became the full- fledged nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of various ranges, including the atomic bomb, H-bomb and intercontinental ballistic rockets," he said. "The entire US mainland is within our firing range and if the US dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe." 
 
 Mixed messages 
 
 US-led efforts to apply additional diplomatic pressure on North Korea in recent months have been met with greater defiance as the Kim regime continues to march toward realizing its nuclear ambitions. 
 
 Despite assurances from Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the US continues to seek a peaceful resolution, neither side has overtly indicated that it is ready or willing to engage in serious negotiations. 
 
 Trump has repeatedly undercut comments made by his top officials and publicly engaged in a war of words with Kim that has devolved into insults and name-calling -- only raising fears of an eventual military conflict. 
 
 Trump said earlier this month that the US will "do what we must do" to prevent further threats from North Korea. 
 
 "We cannot allow this dictatorship to threaten our nation or our allies with unimaginable loss of life," he said at a meeting with top military officers. "We will do what we must do to prevent that from happening and it will be done if necessary, believe me." ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By William M. Arkin, Cynthia McFadden, Kevin Monahan and Robert Windrem 
 
 The National Security Council has presented President Donald Trump with options to respond to North Korea's nuclear program — including putting American nukes in South Korea or killing dictator Kim Jong-un, multiple top-ranking intelligence and military officials told NBC News. 
 
 Both scenarios are part of an accelerated review of North Korea policy prepared in advance of Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week. 
 
 The White House hopes the Chinese will do more to influence Pyongyang through diplomacy and enhanced sanctions. But if that fails, and North Korea continues its development of nuclear weapons, there are other options on the table that would significantly alter U.S. policy. 
 
 The first and most controversial course of action under consideration is placing U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea. The U.S. withdrew all nuclear weapons from South Korea 25 years ago. Bringing back bombs — likely to Osan Air Base, less than 50 miles south of the capital of Seoul — would mark the first overseas nuclear deployment since the end of the Cold War, an unquestionably provocative move. 
 
 "We have 20 years of diplomacy and sanctions under our belt that has failed to stop the North Korean program," one senior intelligence official involved in the review told NBC News. "I’m not advocating pre-emptive war, nor do I think that the deployment of nuclear weapons buys more for us than it costs," but he stressed that the U.S. was dealing with a "war today" situation. He doubted that Chinese and American interests coincided closely enough to find a diplomatic solution. 
 
 An undated file photograph released by the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un overseeing Korean People's Army military exercise in Pyongyang, North Korea. KCNA/EPA/REX/Shutterstock / Shutterstock 
 
 "I don’t think that [deploying nuclear weapons] is a good idea. I think that it will only inflame the view from Pyongyang," retired Adm. James Stavridis told NBC News. "I don't see any upside to it because the idea that we would use a nuclear weapon even against North Korea is highly unlikely." 
 
 Two military sources told NBC News that Air Force leadership doesn't necessarily support putting nuclear weapons in South Korea. As an alternative, it's been practicing long-range strikes with strategic bombers — sending them to the region for exercises and deploying them in Guam and on the peninsula as a show of force. 
 
 Mark Lippert, the former U.S, ambassador to South Korea, said nuclear deployment there is a concept that's been embraced by a growing number of Koreans. 
 
 "Some polls put it at well over 50 percent," he said. "It's something that's being debated, and support for it over time, at least at this point, is climbing." 
 
 Still, he thinks it's a bad idea, undermining the U.S. objective of a nuclear-free zone and "South Korea's moral authority toward de-nuclearization of the peninsula." 
 
 A woman walks past a television screen showing file footage of a North Korean missile launch, at a railway station in Seoul on April 5, 2017. Jung Yeon-Je / AFP - Getty Images 
 
 Another option is to target and kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and other senior leaders in charge of the country's missiles and nuclear weapons and decision-making. Adopting such an objective has huge downsides, said Lippert, who also served as an assistant defense secretary under President Barack Obama. 
 
 "Discussions of regime change and decapitation...tend to cause the Chinese great pause of concern and tends to have them move in the opposite direction we would like them to move in terms of pressure," he said. 
 
 Stavridis, a former NATO commander, said that "decapitation is always a tempting strategy when you're faced with a highly unpredictable and highly dangerous leader." 
 
 "The question you have to ask yourself," he said, "is what happens the day after you decapitate? I think that in North Korea, it's an enormous unknown." 
 
 A third option is covert action, infiltrating U.S. and South Korean special forces into North Korea to sabotage or take out key infrastructure — for instance, blowing up bridges to block the movement of mobile missiles. The CIA, which would oversee such operations, told NBC News it could offer "no guidance" on this option. But Stavridis said that he felt it was the "best strategy" should the U.S. be forced to take military action. He described such action as: "some combination of special forces with South Korea and cyber." 
 
 Last year, South Korea announced the creation of a special operations unit called Spartan 3000 to operate behind enemy frontlines inside North Korea. 
 
 Trump has already indicated he's open to unilateral action if China fails to rein in its ally, telling the Financial Times over the weekend, "If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will." 
 
 But on Wednesday, Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "any solution to the North Korea problem has to involve China." He said that while his job was to present "military options" to the White House, he finds it "hard ... to see a solution without China." 
 
 Related: Defense Secretary Says North Korea 'Has Got to be Stopped' 
 
 Still, military exercises and simulations focused on North Korea have been getting larger and more complex in recent years. In 2017 alone, these exercises have included; 
 
 "Key Resolve," a command post exercise held in March 
 
 "Foal Eagle," a peninsula-wide mobilization and logistics exercise underway now, 
 
 An anti-submarine exercise taking place this month, part of the "Silent Shark" series. 
 
 "Nimble Titan," a gigantic multinational missile defense synchronization experiment last month. 
 
 And last month, the Army announced that it would permanently station its version of the armed Predator — called Gray Eagle — on the Korean Peninsula. That follows an exercise last summer in which hunter-killer Reaper drones practiced the mock destruction of North Korean mobile missile launchers. 
 
 Since North Korea’s first successful nuclear test in 2009, the United States has adopted a strategy to "slow, stop, and defeat" the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile pursuits. That ranges from interdiction of supplies to interception of a ballistic missile actually in the air. 
 
 The Trump White House, through the National Security Council, asked for blue sky options in early February, a senior official told NBC on background. "Think big," the official said that the agencies were instructed. Many proposals have already been abandoned, but on the military side, sources say, the three options with the highest impact still constitute the next steps. 
 
 "It is absolutely appropriate," Stavridis said, for all contingencies to be considered. "In fact, it's mandatory for the Pentagon to present the widest possible array of options. That's what enables presidents to make the right decisions, when they see all the options on the table in front of them."
– South Korea has taken the unusual step of publicly speaking about plans to assassinate Kim Jong Un and other North Korean leaders in the event of conflict. After North Korea's latest nuclear test, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young Moo told lawmakers that he was speeding up the creation of a "decapitation unit" capable of crossing the border for nighttime missions against North Korean facilities and its "wartime command," the New York Times reports. Officials say the special forces unit, which will apparently be comprised of members of the "Spartan 3000" unit, will be capable of striking anywhere in the Korean Peninsula within 24 hours. Song has said he wants to have the unit ready by the end of the year. The creation of the unit is part of South Korea's "Massive Punishment and Retaliation" plan for possible war with the North, Vox reports. Analysts say that by disclosing facts about the "decapitation unit," Seoul appears to want to make Pyongyang nervous enough to think twice about its nuclear program and return to the negotiating table. "The best deterrence we can have, next to having our own nukes, is to make Kim Jong Un fear for his life," says retired Gen. Shin Won Sik, formerly the South Korean military's chief strategist. President Trump, meanwhile, said Tuesday that tough new sanctions are "no big deal" compared to "what ultimately will have to happen" to North Korea, CNN reports.