The US is monitoring North Korea for signs of deadly military action

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after shifting to a policy of open hostility, U.S. officials say.

The officials believe that Mr. Kim's recent tougher stance is part of a pattern of provocations, but that his statements have been more aggressive than previous statements and should be taken seriously.

Although the officials added that they saw no immediate risk of a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula, Kim could carry out attacks in a way that he believes would prevent rapid escalation.

As an example, they cited North Korea's shelling of a South Korean island in 2010. The two sides exchanged artillery fire, resulting in the reported deaths of troops on both sides and civilians in the South, but both militaries soon stopped.

Jonathan Finer, the White House deputy national security adviser, said Thursday at an Asia Society forum in Washington that North Korea “has chosen to continue on a very negative path.”

Mr Kim's more aggressive stance has been evident in a series of actions this month. On Wednesday, the North fired several cruise missiles into the sea from its west coast, the South Korean military said. Kim's government announced on January 14 that it had tested a new intermediate-range solid-fuel missile equipped with a hypersonic warhead. And on January 5, his army fired hundreds of artillery shells into the waters near the South Korean islands, forcing some residents to seek shelter.

At the same time, Mr. Kim has decided to formally abandon a long-standing official goal of peaceful reunification with South Korea, North Korean state news media announced on January 16. Mr. Kim had announced the move for months, saying in a speech the day before that conciliatory references to unity with the Republic of Korea, as the South is officially known, should be removed from the constitution.

“We can specify in our Constitution the issue of fully occupying, subduing and reclaiming the ROK and annexing it as part of the territory of our republic in case a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula,” Mr. Kim said.

He has repeatedly denounced the three-way security pact announced in August by President Biden, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan.

The coincidence of Mr. Kim's policy shift and the firing of projectiles has drawn the attention of American officials who monitor North Korea, which has a nuclear weapons program and is under heavy United Nations sanctions. Mr. Kim's moves also appear to close the door for now on any chance for diplomacy with the United States, which he has shunned since his personal talks with President Donald J. Trump collapsed in 2019.

And U.S. officials say the North Korean leader likely feels emboldened by his growing partnership with Russia.

“The statements and policy changes are part of a broader strategy to destabilize and create fear,” said Jean H. Lee, a fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. She added that she thought Mr Kim could take military action in an area such as the West Sea or the Yellow Sea, where South Korean islands are located – including the one that Mr Kim's father shelled in 2010 – and where the North is contesting a maritime dispute. border.

Two North Korean experts made an argument an article this month that the situation on the Korean Peninsula is “more dangerous than at any time since early June 1950,” when Mr. Kim's grandfather decided to invade the South.

In the article, which was read by analysts and U.S. government policymakers, the authors wrote that, based on their interpretation of recent statements, Mr. Kim had “made a strategic decision to go to war.”

But so far, U.S. agencies have found no concrete signs that North Korea is preparing for a fight or major war, according to U.S. officials interviewed for this article who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence and diplomatic matters.

One official said North Korea's decision to send large numbers of older artillery shells and smaller numbers of more modern ballistic missiles to Russia for the war in Ukraine showed that Kim was not preparing for a protracted conflict with the South. A leader planning a major military operation would hoard his supply of rockets and artillery shells, the official said.

A barrage of missiles and artillery on South Korea or a land invasion would almost certainly mean war with the United States. The U.S. military defended South Korea during the Korean War, which never officially ended but stopped when an armistice was signed in 1953. Nearly 30,000 American troops are based in South Korea.

Mr. Kim likely believes he can contain any escalation, U.S. officials said. When North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong Island in 2010, the South Korean military retaliated, but the two sides quickly ended their artillery exchange.

Earlier that year, 46 sailors were killed when a South Korean warship sank off the country's west coast; an investigation by international experts concluded a few months afterwards that the warship had been struck by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine. South Korea imposed sanctions on the North, which had denied any role in the episode but had not carried out military strikes. During naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002, both Koreas also avoided escalating into full-blown war by keeping their interactions proportionate.

North Korea can decimate cities in South Korea and kill American troops on the peninsula with conventional weapons. The South and the United States also have the means to quickly destroy Pyongyang, the North's capital, and military sites across the country.

North Korea has enough fissile material, mostly highly enriched uranium, for about 50 to 60 nuclear warheads, says Siegfried S. Hecker, a scientist at Stanford University who co-wrote the recent article about Mr. Kim going to war.

Robert Carlin, the other author and former US intelligence analyst on North Korea, said in an interview that based on the North's actions and official statements since 2021, they had concluded that Mr Kim had followed a decades-long policy of had given up efforts to normalize relations. with the United States.

“We surprised ourselves when we saw how alarming this situation had become,” Mr Carlin said.

He said he believed North Korean military planners would favor a surprise attack, which commanders carried out when they invaded the South in 1950, to “throw the Americans off balance mentally, throw everyone off balance.”

The North Korean government seemed particularly fixated on the August 2021 departure of the US military from Afghanistan, which Mr Trump had planned and Mr Biden had carried out. North Korean officials “portrayed it as a U.S. global withdrawal,” Carlin said.

Daniel Russel, a vice president at the Asia Society and a former top Asia official at the State Department, said Mr. Kim appeared intent on a strike that would go far beyond the 2010 shelling. “We must prepare for the prospect of Kim taking a shocking kinetic action,” he said.

Mr. Biden, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other U.S. officials have spoken to their Chinese counterparts about their efforts to convince North Korea to end its missile tests, which have increased in recent years. Although China helped North Korea evade sanctions, it did not want armed conflict in the region, U.S. officials said.

However, there are limits to Chinese influence in North Korea — and it could be declining because of Mr. Kim's efforts to forge closer ties with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Wang Huiyao, the president of the Center for China and Globalization, a research group in Beijing, described the overall situation as “very dangerous” and said “all parties involved need to talk to each other.”

Two US officials said Kim appeared to have strengthened his military and diplomatic position, and it would be surprising if he risked that – and his regime – in a war.

His military has improved its ballistic missile program thanks to frequent testing, they said, as Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin appeared to forge a personal bond starting with their meeting in the Russian Far East in September. North Korean state media reported that Putin said he planned to visit the country soon.

The Biden administration has been trying to convince North Korea to commit to diplomacy since 2021. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on January 19 said in a statement that the United States continues to “seek dialogue” with the North “without preconditions and harbors no hostile intentions.”

But Mr Carlin said Mr Kim felt betrayed and humiliated by Mr Trump during the failed diplomacy of 2019. And he said the North Koreans knew the US line on dialogue without preconditions was “an old talking point” that did not signal any potential. change in US policy, which is based on sanctions aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program.

“If they have decided that they don't trust the Americans to ever do anything useful,” Mr. Carlin said, “then why would they respond positively?”

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Choe Sang Hun from Seoul.