The photographs appear to show the total destruction of a US plane, but were heavily doctored by the rogue state’s DPRK and released this morning. They emerged just a day after North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho threatened that an attack on the US was now “more inevitable.” In the photos, Pyongyang’s missiles strike a US strategic bomber B-1B and the USS carl Vinson - a carrier. The images were released after the US president put on a show of American military might, by sending US bombers and fighter escorts into international airspace on Saturday.

Donald Trump's bombers were located in the farthest point north of the border between North Korea and South Korea that any such American aircraft has gone in this century. The photoshopped North Korean pictures were shared with the caption: "Should F-35, B-1B and the Carl Vinson lead the US attack, they will head to the grave in that order." North Korea staged a large anti-US rally in its capital city, backing its leader Kim as he exchanges insult-laden threats with President Trump. A huge crowd gathered Saturday in Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung Square, named for the current leader's grandfather and founder of North Korea.

They listened to speeches from senior officials excoriating the United States and its president. A parade of marchers carried signs with slogans such as "decisive revenge" and "death to the American imperialists". They shouted phrases such as "total destruction," according to the Korean Central News Agency, the state news service. Meanwhile, in a speech, at the United Nations in front of world leaders, North Korea’s foreign minister Ri fired fresh insults at Mr Trump. He branded him “a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency". And he said Mr Trump's "reckless and violent words" had provoked "the supreme dignity" of North Korea and "rendered this sacred UN arena tainted".

They shouted phrases such as "total destruction," according to the Korean Central News Agency, the state news service. Meanwhile, in a speech, at the United Nations in front of world leaders, North Korea’s foreign minister Ri fired fresh insults at Mr Trump. He branded him “a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency". And he said Mr Trump's "reckless and violent words" had provoked "the supreme dignity" of North Korea and "rendered this sacred UN arena tainted".</s>North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) visits the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun on the 72nd birth anniversary of North Korea's late leader Kim Jong Il in this photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang February 16, 2014. REUTERS/KCNA

SEOUL (Reuters) - After a year of investigation, the United Nations is set to release a detailed report on human rights violations in North Korea that could pave the way for criminal prosecution in an international court.

But defectors from the country who have provided first-hand testimony of atrocities are deeply skeptical the report, to be issued on Monday, will have any effect on the regime in Pyongyang.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea was set up last March to begin building a case for possible criminal prosecution.

Michael Kirby, who chairs the independent inquiry, said after preliminary findings last year that inmates in North Korea’s prison camps suffered “unspeakable atrocities”, comparable with Nazi abuses uncovered after World War 2.

“The entire body of evidence gathered so far points to what appear to be large-scale patterns of systematic and gross human rights violations,” Kirby, a former justice of Australia’s top court, told the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee last October, adding that Pyongyang had refused to cooperate with the inquiry.

But any attempt to follow up the final report with prosecution will most likely be blocked by China. North Korea itself labels any attack on its human rights record as a U.S.-led conspiracy.

The preliminary report did not say what kind of prosecution might be considered. North Korea is not a member of the International Criminal Court, but the U.N. Security Council can ask the Hague-based court to investigate alleged abuses by non-signatories.

China, the North’s major ally and main benefactor, stands ready to veto any attempt to mobilize the Security Council to open an investigation against Pyongyang.

“In some respects I have been disappointed with the United Nations, although the U.N. is trying to resolve the issue” said Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean defector who has given the U.N. panel harrowing accounts of his life and escape from a prison camp. As a 13-year-old, he informed a prison guard of a plot by his mother and brother to escape and both were executed, according to a book on his life called “Escape from Camp 14”.

“The Human Rights Council, the biggest organization in the U.N., has not solved any problems,” Shin said in an interview in Seoul ahead of the report’s release.

More than 200,000 people are believed to be held in North Korean prison camps, according to independent estimates.

The U.N. panel has worked to bring new attention to the allegations of horror at North Korea’s gulags with evidence and testimony from exiles, including camp survivors, in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington but has failed to gain access to North Korea.

Shin said China continues to use North Korea as a tool to keep U.S. influence in the region under control.

“So far China has neglected North Korea’s human rights issue and supported its dictatorship,” he said.

After more than two years in power, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shows no signs of changing the iron-fisted rule of his predecessors, forging ahead with a reign of terror and ordering the execution of his powerful uncle following a brutal public purge.

“North Korea won’t bat an eyelid,” said Hwang Jae-ok, vice president of the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul, who has extensively studied Pyongyang’s human rights record. “It has built up a strong tolerance to sanctions and pressure.”

The North has been under gradually tougher international and U.S. sanctions since its first nuclear test in 2006.

The sanctions have not stopped Kim, believed to be in his early 30s, from stepping up the nuclear and missile programs launched by his father and accomplishing what experts have said were notable successes that have turned the clock back on years of disarmament efforts led by Washington.

Human rights activists hope the panel’s report work and the global attention it generates will seep back across North Korea.

But Baek Kyung-yoon, a North Korean female army captain who fled to the South in 2000, said her former compatriots are unlikely to have the luxury of pondering about human rights or anticipating improvement.

“Loyalty (to the regime) is everything and it’s nonsense to discuss human rights there,” Baek said on Wednesday, ahead of the premiere of “The Apostle: He Was Anointed By God”. The Korean-language film is based on her experience of ordering the torture of a man who possessed a few pages from the Bible.

A U.S. Christian missionary, Kenneth Bae, was sentenced last year to 15 years of hard labor after being convicted of state subversion. Pyongyang has abruptly rescinded a visit by a U.S. special envoy to seek Bae’s release for a second time.

Religious persecution is one of 11 areas of inquiry by the U.N. panel, which also include food deprivation, torture, executions and abductions.

Despite his frustration with the lack of visible progress, Shin, who had a finger chopped off with a butcher knife by prison guards as a punishment, still hopes the United Nations can bring change in North Korea.

“Personally the COI (Commission of Inquiry) is my last remaining hope. Even if there is little chance for change, I am betting everything I have.”</s>The weekend saw an escalation in the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang, complete with a U.S. show of military might over the waters near North Korea and jitters over what seismologists say was an earthquake near a North Korean nuclear test site.

On Saturday, North Korea issued fiery rhetoric from the podium at the United Nations General Assembly. Offset by the backdrop of green marble, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho condemned Trump's "reckless and violent words," delivered from the same podium days earlier. Ri said Trump will "pay dearly" for his speech Tuesday.

In his debut address to the General Assembly, President Trump pledged to "totally destroy" North Korea if the United States is forced to protect itself or its allies. He used his oft-repeated moniker for Kim Jong Un, saying "Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime."

Ri echoed Trump's words Saturday, saying it is the U.S. president who "is on a suicide mission." Ri said the United States has forced North Korea to possess nuclear weapons and that with Trump's speech "our rockets' visit to the entire U.S. mainland" are all the more "inevitable." Ri then referred to the North using a "nuclear hammer of justice."

Sunday, Trump responded to Ri's U.N. speech with another threat, tweeting that if Ri "echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"

Earlier Saturday, U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers and F-15C Eagle fighter escorts flew in international airspace over the waters east of North Korea in response to Pyongyang's "reckless behavior," Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said in a statement.

"This is the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea's coast in the 21st century," White said. "This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the President has many military options to defeat any threat."

White went on to say that the U.S. is ready "to use the full range of military capabilities" to defend the homeland and allies.

Also Saturday, marchers in Pyonyang carried signs calling for "death to the American imperialists" accompanied by shouts for "total destruction," reports The Associated Press citing the state news agency. It was part of a major anti-U.S. rally that brought together officials, students and workers.

The demonstration came a day after Kim issued a rare direct statement to Trump's U.N. speech, saying, "I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U. S. dotard with fire."

In another dizzying development Saturday, what seismologists say was a minor earthquake prompted speculation that Pyongyang could be conducting yet another weapons test. As The Two-Way reported, the tremor occurred near the site where North Korea conducted its most powerful nuclear test earlier this month.</s>Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What would a war look like?

North Korea's foreign minister has accused US President Donald Trump of declaring war on his country and said Pyongyang had the right to shoot down US bombers.

Ri Yong-ho said this could apply even if the warplanes were not in North Korea's airspace.

The White House dismissed the statement as "absurd". The Pentagon warned Pyongyang to stop provocations.

A UN spokesman said fiery talk could lead to fatal misunderstandings.

Mr Ri's comments were a response to Mr Trump's tweet that the North Korean leadership would not "be around much longer" if they continued their rhetoric.

"The whole world should clearly remember it was the US who first declared war on our country," Mr Ri told reporters as he was leaving New York, where he had addressed the UN General Assembly on Saturday.

"Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make counter-measures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country."

Mr Trump's tweet followed Mr Ri's fiery speech to the UN on Saturday, when he described the US president as a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania" on a "suicide mission".

Referring to Mr Trump's post, North Korea's minister said "the question of who won't be around much longer" would be answered by his country.

Mr Ri's remarks - not the first time that North Korea has used the phrase "a declaration of war" in relation to the US - are the latest in an increasingly angry war of words between the two countries.

His statement came two days after US warplanes flew close to North Korea's coast in a show of force.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sarah Sanders: Frankly the suggestion is absurd

Pentagon spokesman Col Robert Manning reacted by saying: "If North Korea does not stop their provocative actions, you know, we will make sure that we provide options to the president to deal with North Korea."

"We want things to calm down," China's ambassador to the UN, Liu Jieyi, told Reuters. "It's getting too dangerous and it's in nobody's interest."

Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for UN Secretary General António Guterres, said: "Fiery talk can lead to fatal misunderstandings."

"The only solution for this is a political solution," he added.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ri Yong-ho says Donald Trump "declared a war on our country"

Despite weeks of tension, experts have played down the risk of direct conflict between the two.

North Korea has continued to carry out nuclear and ballistic missile tests in recent weeks, in defiance of successive rounds of UN sanctions.

The country's leaders say nuclear capabilities are its only deterrent against an outside world seeking to destroy it.

After the North's latest and most powerful nuclear test earlier this month, the UN Security Council approved new sanctions on the country.

Actions not words

By Jonathan Marcus, BBC News diplomatic correspondent

The rhetoric on both sides may have got out of hand already but the real question is what practical consequences might ensue from the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang?

It should be remembered that the Korean peninsula is not at peace - the Korean conflict of the 1950s was only brought to a halt by an armistice, not a peace treaty.

But it is actions that are likely to provoke renewed fighting, not just words.

The latest North Korean threat to shoot down US warplanes comes in the wake of a recent US patrol that took its B1-B Lancer bombers and their accompanying F-15 fighter escorts over waters to the east of North Korea - the furthest north US warplanes have flown for several months, albeit still outside Pyongyang's airspace.

The US believes it has every right to do this but if one day Pyongyang judges that these aircraft are on an offensive mission - what then?</s>The Pentagon said the mission in international airspace showed how seriously Trump takes N Korea's ‘reckless behavior.’ (Representational Image | AFP)

Washington: In a show of American military might to North Korea, US bombers and fighter escorts flew to the farthest point north of the border between North and South Korea by any such American aircraft this century. The Pentagon said the mission in international airspace showed how seriously President Donald Trump takes North Korea's "reckless behavior."

"This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Defense Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement.

"North Korea's weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies," White said.

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, has said Trump would "pay dearly" for threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if the US was forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack. Kim's foreign minister told reporters this past week that the North's response to Trump "could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific."

North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he won't allow it, although the US so far has not used military force to impede the North's progress.

The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday. The US characterized the flights as extending farther north of the Demilitarized Zone, than any US fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.

B-1 bombers are no longer part of the US nuclear force, but they are capable of dropping large numbers of conventional bombs.

US Pacific Command would not be more specific about many years it had been since US bombers and fighters had flown that far north of the DMZ, but a spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Dave Benham, noted that this century "encompasses the period North Korea has been testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons."

At the United Nations, North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said Saturday that his country's nuclear force is "to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the US and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the US"

He also said that Trump's depiction of Kim as "Rocket Man" makes "our rocket's visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more."

Trump on Friday had renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.

Trump continued the heated exchange with the North Koreans Saturday night.

He tweeted, "Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"

On Thursday, Trump announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime," Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.

Hours later, Kim responded by saying Trump was "deranged."

In a speech last week at the United Nations, Trump had issued the warning of potential obliteration and mocked the North's young autocrat as a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission."

Trump's executive order expanded the Treasury Department's ability to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea, and to ban them from interacting with the US financial system.

Trump also said China was imposing major banking sanctions, too, but there was no immediate confirmation from the North's most important trading partner.

If enforced, the Chinese action Trump described could severely impede the isolated North's ability to raise money for its missile and nuclear development. China, responsible for about 90 percent of North Korea's trade, serves as the country's conduit to the international banking system.</s>Head of the North Korean high-level delegation, Won Tong Yon (L) shakes hands with his South Korean counterpart Kim Kyou-hyun upon his arrival at the Peace House on the southern side of the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone, north of Seoul February 14, 2014. REUTERS/Unification Ministry/Yonhap

SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea agreed on Friday to proceed with reunions of families separated by the Korean War despite an earlier North Korean demand that they could only go ahead if the South postponed military exercises with the United States.

The agreement clearly represented a concession by the North, which has made unpredictable diplomatic moves over the past month. The North had proposed the reunions, but then threatened to withdraw consent over a sortie by a U.S. B52 bomber.

It had also demanded that the South call off annual defense drills later this month with the United States on grounds that they overlapped with the proposed reunions. The South refused, saying the reunions and the military exercises should be treated separately.

In the end, there was no link between the issues in a three-point agreement reached after two sessions of talks this week, the first high-level meetings between the sides in seven years.

“We tried to drive home the point that the family reunion event will be the first step in building trust so we should press ahead with it,” South Korea’s chief delegate, Kim Kyou-hyun, told a news briefing.

“The North accepted this point in the end and we came to the agreement,” he said. Kim is South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s deputy national security adviser.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Seoul on Thursday it was inappropriate for North Korea to link the family reunions with the military exercises.

The two Koreas, still in theory at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended only with an armistice, also agreed to stop engaging in denunciations of each other’s leadership. In a third point, they said the two sides would meet again to discuss matters of interest.

Only a week ago, the reclusive North reversed position and withdraw at the last minute an invitation for a U.S. envoy to visit its capital to discuss the release of a U.S. missionary jailed for “hostile acts”.

North Korea’s chief delegate to the talks at the Panmunjom “truce” village on the border was Won Tong Yon, the second highest ranking official in the ruling Workers’ Party United Front Department, which looks after dealings with the South.

Jeung Young-tae of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul said both sides came away with a face-saving deal and were able to claim a small victory.

“Using family reunions, North Korea has achieved one of its goals of getting the South to agree to stop denouncing each other’s leadership,” he said. “And South Korea also got what it has been pursuing - opening the door to dialogue.”

The North denounces the annual exercises with the United States, which maintains about 28,500 troops in the South, as a rehearsal for an invasion. The South and Washington say they have been conducted for years without incident.

The North threatened during last year’s drills to attack the South and the United States in weeks of shrill rhetoric that following the imposition of new U.N. sanctions in response to a new nuclear test by Pyongyang.

China, North Korea’s sole diplomatic ally, pushed back against a call from Kerry during his visit to Seoul for China to do more to bring North Korea into line.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kerry in Beijing on Friday, in comments reported by China’s state media, that Beijing would not tolerate any chaos or war on the Korean peninsula.</s>South Korean President Park Geun-hye looks at the exhibition 'DMZ-Gruenes Band' during a visit to the East Side Gallery in Berlin March 27, 2014. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea published comments on Friday attacking South Korean President Park Geun-hye, descending to unprecedented levels of personal insult by describing her as a “repulsive wench” who had failed to marry or bear children.

The brutal denunciation, going far beyond previous criticism in the reclusive authoritarian state’s media, was certain to deepen animosity amid growing tensions on the world’s most militarized border.

The KCNA news agency carried what it said were comments by a private citizen criticizing Park’s offer last week to help the impoverished North’s women and children as ”foul-smelling vituperation uttered by human scum.

“Park Geun-hye is but an unseemly wench who has never had a chance to marry or bear a child,” the citizen, Kim Un Kyong, was quoted as saying by KCNA.

Park, the citizen said, had no right to talk about the children of North Korea.

“A repulsive wench such as Park Geun-hye is an incoherent existence who has long given up trying to be a woman of Korea and who makes a mockery of sacred motherhood, mad with the pursuit of national confrontation.”

North Korea tightly controls the content of its media, frequently dominated by articles lionizing past and present leaders. Dispatches often quote people said to be private citizens or obscure foreign groups to attack the South and the United States.

North Korea has steadily raised the level of insult against Park in recent weeks, after accusing the South of breaking an agreement to work to improve ties by stopping statements slandering of each others’ leaders.

In late March, a North Korean agency that handles ties with the South criticized Park’s comments at a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe calling on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.

North Korea accused the South of “gangster-like” behavior after the South returned a fishing boat that had strayed into its waters last week near a tense disputed naval border.

It then fired more than 500 artillery rounds off its shore on Monday, landing more than 100 in South Korea’s waters. The South responded by firing back 300 rounds into the North’s waters.</s>despite being almost enveloped by China's land mass

were among the principal motivations that led Kim Il-Sung to attempt to unify Korea by force and remove the American client government in the south

China, like it or not, will be the dominant power in East Asia, and most of the other nations of Asia are coming round to accept this

How many citizens have ever asked themselves what the United States is doing in Korea in the first place?In November of 1945, two months after the surrender of Japan, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall spoke to President Truman and the chief figures of his cabinet about his fears of a "the tragic consequences of a divided China" as Chinese Nationalist forces and Communists resumed their struggle for power and Soviet forces seized control of large areas of Manchuria." (emphasis added).What could the general have meant by such a statement? What WAS the "major purpose" of the Pacific war? Most Americans are taught that the foremost reason the United States went to war with Japan was the attack on Pearl Harbor. But the reality was that the U.S. and Japan had been on a collision course since the 1920s, and by 1940, in the midst of the global depression, were locked in a mortal struggle over who would ultimately benefit most from the markets and resources of Greater China and East Asia. Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was steadily closing the "Open Door" to American penetration of and access to the profitable riches of Asia at the critical moment. As Japan militarily took control of East Asia, the U.S. moved the Pacific Fleet to Hawaii in striking distance of Japan, imposed economic sanctions, embargoed steel and oil, and in August 1941 issued an overt ultimatum to quit China and Vietnam "or else." Seeing the latter as the threat it was, Japan undertook what to Tokyo was the pre-emptive strike at Hawaii.The U.S. had long envisioned profitable management of client regimes throughout greater East Asia. After Japanese surrender, the U.S. wished to occupy as many of the numerous industrial plants Japan had built in East Asia, the most important of which were in Manchuria and Korea. Washington was also keenly anxious to preempt Soviet occupation of these territories. That is one major reason Truman decided to use the Atomic Bomb on a nation already reduced to cinders. It was also intended to induce Tokyo's formal surrender only to the U.S. and not also to the Soviet Union since, that would have enabled Soviet co-occupation of Japan itself and led to similar problems as were occurring in occupied Germany.Politicians never use the term any more but. Applicable to the entire planet, the policy was enunciated specifically about the "great China market" (actually greater East Asia) but has evolved to encompass the planet. Simply stated, it asserts that American finance and corporations should have untrammeled right of entry into the marketplaces of all nations and territories and access to their resources and cheaper labor power on American terms, sometimes diplomatically, often by armed violence. Consider the frame of reference of Edward Said, who questioned in 2003 "if the principal product of Iraq were broccoli would the United States be in Iraq?" The U.S. has intervened militarily and covertly in so many nations, it is impossible to recount them all, but in every case the American military is protecting some investments of value to American corporations, or a strategic position, or both.Formulated in response to Japan's war with China of 1894 that resulted in Japanese control of key Chinese and Korean territory and resources, the policy was announced in 1899 to forestall the establishment of autarkic "spheres of influence" across other areas of China and coastal Asia. Anxiety abounded among American business classes that, besides Japan, Russia was encroaching in Manchuria, that Britain would capitalize on its control of Hong Kong and Shanghai to enlarge its sphere, and that rapidly emergent Germany would also gain concessions,. Further south, the French and Dutch were busy conquering territories later known as Vietnam and Indonesia.Benign as they appeared, the centrality of the Open Door notes cannot be overstated.. As enunciated, its liberal language also asserted that such rights should also apply to all other nations. Yet, as American financial and industrial dominance intensified in the early 19Century, it soon became apparent to the U.S.'s rivals that Washington and Wall Street held most of the advantages and the policy would enable the U.S. effectively to out-compete them in the scramble for East Asia.But the outbreak of World War I in 1914 soon eliminated most European empires as great powers. The prime beneficiaries of that self-inflicted calamity were the U.S. and Japan, and, some may say, ultimately the Soviet Union. The future of China and its environs was thereafter to be contested between the U.S., Japan, the USSR and the Chinese themselves.In 1799 the American Museum of the China Trade was established by Boston sea captains calling themselves the East India Marine Society, and is well visited today in Salem, Massachusetts.By the mid-1840s the London based East India Company had wrested control of what is now modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and then set its sights upon China. The principal weapon involved was a peculiar agricultural commodity native to India that ultimately served to undermine Chinese sovereignty as surely as the cannon the company unleashed upon China's ports.. Greater East Asia would soon succumb also to the incursion of the French, Germans, Russians, Japanese, even the Italians, and ultimately the Americans. The Age of Imperialism had commenced and soon Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines would be targets as well. The seeds of the 20Century's Asian Wars were being sown.Lagging behind much of Europe in industrializing, and stifled by the Civil War the United States, like Japan and Germany, was a latecomer to the great game of imperialism, but by the turn of the 20th Century the U.S. was poised to make its move toward what most of its elites believed was America's fated destiny.In 1853-54 President Millard Fillmore dispatched naval Commodore Mathew Perry to Japan with the mission to "open" that nation to American commerce and to serve as a staging area for further penetration of the continent itself. The Japanese had resisted relations with the West (as did Korea and Vietnam). When the Japanese refused Perry's demands, he demonstrated the power of American cannon, an event that shattered the complacency local daimyos had about their ability to resist Western incursions. Under duress from a technologically and militarily more advanced society, Japanese leaders undertook the total transformation of Japanese society, leading Japan to "modernize" along Western lines in every respect to overnight became a formidable military power poised to compete with Europeans and Americans on their own terms in the "scramble" to occupy and exploit East Asia. When Japan occupied much of that very territory after 1932 the Pacific War became inevitable.Immediately after the Civil War the U.S. Navy maintained a sustained presence throughout the Pacific Ocean, especially in Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam, where it undertook numerous armed interventions. This Asiatic Squadron's mission was, as historian William Appleman Williams wrote, "to ensure law and order and ensure economic access... while preventing European powers... from obtaining privileges that would exclude Americans."By the 1890s ruling opinion demanded outlets beyond the landed frontier, to the Pacific and on to the Great China Market. Since native regimes would resist the rapacity of American penetration, as would imperial rivals, the strategy to expand markets would also require military exploits.. Mahan coupled his analysis of the economic and social crisis facing the U.S. to the anxieties of the business elites about their inability to sell their growing surpluses of industrial production and called upon political leaders to leap beyond the landed frontier to the oceans and establish "colonies" as markets for the surpluses, and bases from which to protect and administer them. This, in turn, would require the expansion of naval power, a proposition the emerging steel and ship building trusts and their Washington confederates, especially Roosevelt, leapt to initiate. Mahan's gaze fell upon China, whose population he considered "sheep without a shepherd."Responding to the international dissection of their country Chinese nationalists rose against all foreigners in what became known as the "Boxer Rebellion," during which the U.S. and others dispatched troops to crush the insurrection. Casting themselves as unselfish, the Open Door policymakers cared little about what the Chinese thought but were concerned only to stake the American claim and ensure that other imperial competitors could not close the door. Meanwhile its imperial competitors understood that the U.S. was now the most powerful industrial nation, able to out-produce and undercut their own rivalry and therefore to close the door and doom themselves "to an inferior position." Left purely to economic circumstances, the outcome would ensure American predominance.In response to the the weakness of the imperial Manchu throne to counter Western and Japanese predation, Sun Yat-Sen and the Kuomintang, or Chinese nationalists, overthrew the monarchy and declared China a republic. But China was highly fractured and the Kuomintang soon splintered. After World War I the Chinese communist Party began to grow in influence and power and after World War II would engage in a civil war won by the communists. In the immediate aftermath of WWII General Marshall was dispatched to China to broker a government composed of both communists and nationalists, but this was a fool's errand even though simultaneously he and others had received a promise from Stalin that the Soviets would not aid the Chinese communists.Having sacrificed more than 150,000 American lives in mortal combat with Japan for control of China, Washington was about to lose China to the Chinese. Of course,. Truman refused to recognize the new communist government and supported the regime of Chiang Kai-Shek (Jiang Jieshi), who had retreated to the island of Formosa, today Taiwan.Perceiving the hostility of the United States and fearing inevitable armed attempts to overthrow communist power in China, the new leaders of that nation prepared its defenses. They would soon require them in Korea.The Soviet Union entered the war in Asia in its last phase. Russia had plenty of reason to war with Japan since Tokyo's government had delivered that nation a humiliating defeat in 1904-1905 and annexed Russian territory in the Far East. So it was the Red Army that delivered the death blows to Japan on the mainland of Asia as an ally of the United States. American troops played no land combat role in China or Korea.By 1910 however, Korea had been conquered and occupied as a Japanese slave colony. Theodore Roosevelt actually endorsed Japanese rule as a means of "civilizing" Korea. The Japanese sought to annex Korea entirely, as they later would in Manchuria. During the period of Japanese rule (1910-1945),. The resistance in Korea won widespread support among Koreans. Most werebut, as in the case of Vietnam, turned their loyalties toward those leaders who resisted Japanese dictatorship and not those who collaborated with their subjugators. The Japanese found willing Koreans to serve as armed police to suppress their fellow Koreans. As events unfolded from 1945-1950, the forces of Kim remained largely in the north in the Soviet zone, thoughAs early as 1945 the American commander in the U.S. zone, General John Hodge, "declared war" on communists, whom he identified with all hostile nationalists tied to Kim Il-Sung or not. Americans employed Japanese-trained armed police, who violently repressed those who resisted this extreme affront. The UN had called for a plebiscite throughout the peninsula, but the north refused to participate primarily because the elections in the south were forcibly controlled by American occupation forces and their southern minions, and, the very people who would have voted for reunification under Kim (shades of Vietnam). Shortly after the government of Syngman Rhee was inaugurated as a result of this provocative and incendiary election, a major revolt broke out on the southern island of Jeju.. In June 1950 Kim's forces crossed the 38parallel, the artificial border decided in Washington, and agreed by the Soviets, thus precipitating the three-year long Korean War that resulted in the deaths of three million Koreans and nearly 50,000 Americans.But Rhee's government had been attempting to cross the border itself, and on the very day that the war began South Korean forces also attacked the north. Which incursion was first is still debated. At first the North Koreans swept in and almost unified the peninsula on their terms.. Then calling upon the UN to authorize a military response by forces largely composed of American troops, Truman intervened in this incipient civil war and thereby initiated a large-scale and utterly cataclysmic one.The northern forces overwhelmed both the Republic of Korea troops and the limited number of American soldiers already in the south. The UN Supreme Commander, Douglas MacArthur, rapidly introduced numerous combat ready troops and air power and routed the northerners and drove them back across the border.. But China's foreign minister, Zhou En-Lai, warned in no uncertain terms that China would not allow American troops anywhere near China and on June Chinese troops crossed the border.In truth the Chinese under ordinary military circumstances could have driven the UN Army off the peninsula entirely, but the atomic bomb had changed the nature of large-scale land war. Both Truman and MacArthur and, later, President Eisenhower, threatened the use of the bomb and that resulted in Chinese withdrawal to roughly the original border. What followed was an armistice (merely a ceasefire: a technical state of war still exists) that remains in effect today although numerous infractions of its terms have been committed by both the U.S. and the Koreans on both sides. The one of most relevance to the crisis ongoing today is the U.S. repudiation of Paragraph 13(d), which obliged both sides not to introduce new weapons on the peninsula. In 1956 Eisenhower, with full support of the National Security Council, unilaterally abrogated Paragraph 13(d). By 1958, short-range nuclear-capable missiles were deployed in South Korea.No threat worthy of nukes emanated from North Korea. Nor was it capable of launching another cross-border attack.. North Korea was never weaker than during this period.The message Washington wished to send was directed at both China and the Soviet Union, which had just launched Sputnik, effectively demonstrating its capacity to launch Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles that intense Cold War propaganda continued to claim were intended to pose an existential threat to the national security of the United States, though Soviet ICBMs were developed in response, and as a deterrent to, the overwhelming air superiority and threat of the U.S.'s nuclear armed fleet of B-52 bombers, the Strategic Air Command.The message broadcast unmistakably stipulated that America's foot was still in the door where Washington intended it to stay and which stance it intended to defend by any means necessary. There it remains today. For their part, responding in grave alarm to this deadly game of atomic chess, the Chinese, and later North Korea, initiated the processes by which both would acquire nuclear weapons of their own.Which leads us finally to today's crisis.A Gallup poll issued last week showed that a majority of Americans, 58%, favor war with Korea if a peaceful resolution fails. The figure climbs to 82% among Republicans. This is madness of the first order. A peaceful resolution is more than possible if the American public wakes up to realities (of the present and past) and demands such an outcome. Diplomacy actually stopped North Korea's earlier efforts to build nukes, and then, in each case, the U.S. violated the terms. It can happen again, but. Just this week Defense Secretary and former Marine Corps General, James Mattis, proposed the use of tactical nuclear weapons with his South Korean counterparts, though his pronouncements to the American public insist that diplomacy is the first choice. An attack on Korea will be unimaginably cataclysmic and has every potential to threaten China and Russia and enflame nuclear apocalypse. Either we accept a nuclear-armed North Korea, and that means also, in all probability a nuclear armed Japan, and perhaps even South Korea, with all the increased and acute jeopardy that entails, or we accede to a catastrophic, destabilizing and potentially all-out cataclysm, or the American public somehow awakens from its fantasies of exceptionalism, and realizes that the essence of U.S. foreign policy has always been aggressive and exploitive, in contradiction to our claims. Eisenhower's warning about the "Military-Industrial Complex" has become a cliché, but he was dead serious. The most powerful, and decisive, branch of the American ruling class is that faction, and it has held sway since 1945. Unless the public comprehends that this reality has brought us to the brink of global catastrophe, and then demands a fundamental reordering of our national priorities, we face a future fraught with extreme jeopardy.The latest heir to the North Korean throne, Kim Jong-Un, like all despots, wishes above all to remain in power. The North Koreans are not jihadists intent on martyrdom. It is perfectly clear to any rational observer that. At the same time, if Kim believes his avowed enemy will try to overthrow his rule, he will unleash what we now know is a formidable arsenal of conventional weapons on the southern capital of Seoul, where more than 20 million people live, including about 200,000 Americans, civilians and military personnel. A conventional attack alone will result in millions of deaths and injuries and will destroy the 5largest economy on the planet, in which American capital has been heavily invested, both in the military-industrial complex and, since the 1950s, the creation of the modern Korean industrial and financial system. (Think Hyundai auto and steel, Samsung. Where did their capital originate? Why did American capital abandon what is now the Rust Belt for better financial and profit climes in Asia?) Such a war will involve millions of refugees, many streaming into China and Russia, both of which share borders with Korea. But since we also know that the northern regime has nuclear weapons which will be launched at American bases and Japan, we ought to be screaming from the rooftops that an American attack will unleash those nukes, potentially on all sides, and the ensuing desolation may rapidly devolve into a nightmarish day of reckoning for the entire human species.Korea remains divided today because the armistice that ended warfare in 1953 was enacted because of China's intervention and because the U.S. could not wage total war on China because that would have set off World War III, and very possibly nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Absent those facts and overwhelming American firepower would have crushed North Korea. Under no circumstances, however, would China or Russia have allowed this outcome, then or now. Nor will they sit passively and allow a colossal inferno and nuclear radiation to envelop much of northeast coastal Asia today, though if that commences then catastrophe follows. To be frank, an American attack on North Korea, even with conventional weapons, will immediately turn nuclear on the North Korean side. South Korea, Japan and American bases within range will be targeted and the American response will also be nuclear. I doubt that any bookie would take bets that China and Russia will remain passive and neutral.For more than a century China has resisted and fought against foreign domination and intervention, as have most of the nations of Asia. China is now a superpower and, despite calling itself communist, is a formidable capitalist competitor with the West and Japan.. If China itself closed the open door, then American ruling class strategy resolved to keep it open throughout the rest of Asia. That is why the Obama Administration (with much influence from Hillary Clinton) conceived the military "pivot to Asia", paralleled by the Trans Pacific Partnership, which aimed at corporate supremacy over governmental regulations, both foreign and domestic, and now on hold in the Trump administration.The U.S. will always be able to trade with any other nation if it accepts that this cannot be on rigidly American terms. That policy is dead in Asia. While Washington has sought global dominance since the end of WWII, it has never achieved it and never will. The attempt will bring on nuclear catastrophe. I am always telling my students that the very existence of nuclear weapons in the current framework of the world's international relations is like leaving a loaded handgun in a childcare center. Sooner or Later! But some students answer: a child care center has responsible adults who will ensure the threat is removed! Listening to the overt threats emanating from Trump himself, Secretary Mattis, UN Ambassador Haley, National Security Adviser General McMaster, and Senator Lindsay Graham leaves one reeling with profound apprehension and incredulity about the sanity of such "leaders."All signs indicate that global warming and climate change will in the near future bring increasing human-made disasters that have every potential to increase refugees, political ruptures and more potential for war.The only sane response is an all-out effort at global cooperation to minimize this worldwide threat and a repudiation of the geo-politics of the past.The only rational and sane policy as a foundation for de-escalation is for diplomatic talks to begin among North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia and the U.S., with a firm commitment from Washington to sign a formal peace treaty and to withdraw its troops and armaments from South Korea in exchange for the disassembly of North Korea's nuclear program. China especially, also Russia, would oversee the north's nuclear disarmament. South Korea is well-armed itself and does not need the U.S. to protect it, and neither China nor Russia wants another war on the Korean peninsula. Nor, most importantly, do most Koreans. The U.S. has been there since 1945 to keep its foot in the door to Asia and safeguard what it has long seen as its entitlement to profit from, not to protect democracy. The Open Door Policy on American terms can never be achieved.because the alternative is a losing proposition. The U.S. and China can find grounds for further mutually advantageous and amicable political and economic relations, but these will have to be on reciprocal and honest grounds. The U.S. can also continue mutual relations with all the other nations of Asia, but not on terms dictated by Washington and the major banks and corporations. The best start is for Washington to take its foot out of the door in Korea before it is too late, but only a determined and truthfully-informed public can make this happen.</s>North Korea’s foreign minister escalated tensions with the United States on Monday, saying that President Trump’s threatening comments about the country and its leadership were “a declaration of war” and that North Korea had the right to shoot down American warplanes, even if they are not in North Korean air space.

“The whole world should clearly remember it was the U.S. who first declared war on our country,” the foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, told reporters as he was leaving the United Nations after a week of General Assembly meetings in New York.

“Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.”

Referring to Mr. Trump’s assertion that the North Korean leadership may not “be around much longer,” Mr. Ri said that the question of “who would be around much longer will be answered” by North Korea.

Mr. Ri, speaking two days after American warplanes flew close to the North’s coast, added that “in light of the declaration of war by Trump, all options will be on the operations table of the supreme leadership” of North Korea.

North Korea had already deemed Mr. Trump’s threat at the United Nations — to “totally destroy” North Korea if the United States were forced to defend itself or its allies — a declaration of war.</s>The White House has dismissed North Korea's claim that a tweet by Donald Trump amounted to a declaration of war.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the US had not "declared war" on Pyongyang.

The Trump administration also clarified on Monday that it was not seeking to overthrow North Korea's government after President Trump tweeted that its leader Kim Jong Un "won't be around much longer".

Pyongyang interpreted that tweet as a declaration of war.

In a speech last week to the United Nations General Assembly that if the US was forced to defend itself against North Korea, "we will have no choice but to totally destroy" the country.

The US and North Korea agreed to an armistice after the 1950-1953 Korean War, not a peace treaty. Because of that, they are still technically at war.

The Trump administration also said it was not advocating regime change in North Korea.

North Korea's top diplomat, foreign minister Ri Yong Ho, responded to that at the United Nations, telling reporters it was a declaration of war against his country by the United States, and that the North had the right to shoot down US warplanes in international airspace.

A senior administration official said Monday that the US policy was not regime change.

Mr Ri told reporters that Mr Trump's statement gives North Korea "every right" under the UN Charter to take counter-measures, "including the right to shoot down the United States strategic bombers even though they're not yet inside the airspace border of our country".

Mr Trump's tweet on Saturday said: "Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"

Mr Ri said: "The question of who won't be around much longer will be answered then."

North Korea has repeatedly said it needs a nuclear deterrent because the US intends to invade it.

Mr Ri told the UN General Assembly on Saturday that the Pyongyang's recent "ICBM-mountable H-bomb test" was a key step to completing its nuclear force.

He called it "a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the US and for preventing its military invasion".

"Our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the US," he said.
North Korea says that the recent flight of U.S. aircraft off the coast of North Korea amounts to a declaration of war.