North Korea fires short-range missiles in challenge to Biden administration

WASHINGTON - North Korea fired short range missiles last weekend after denouncing Washington for going forward with joint military exercises with South Korea, according to people familiar with the situation.

The missile tests, which have not previously been reported, represent North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s first direct challenge to President Joe Biden, whose aides have not outlined their approach to the regime’s nuclear threat amid an ongoing review of U.S.-North Korea policy.

For weeks, U.S. defense officials said intelligence indicated that North Korea might carry out missile tests. The regime elevated its complaints about U.S. military exercises last week when Kim’s sister warned that if the Biden administration “wants to sleep in peace for the coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink.”

The tests put renewed pressure on the United States to develop a strategy to address a nuclear threat that has bedeviled successive Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.

State Department spokesman Ned Price has said the Biden administration wants to develop a “new approach” to North Korea, but he has offered few details. U.S. diplomats have informed allies in Asia in recent weeks that the strategy will differ from President Donald Trump’s top-down approach of meeting directly with Kim and President Barack Obama’s bottom-up formulation, which swore off engagement until Pyongyang improved its behavior.

Neither policy stopped North Korea from advancing its weapons systems and repressing its citizens through a combination of mass surveillance, torture and political prisoner camps condemned by human rights groups around the world.

The remaining benefit of Trump’s summit diplomacy is that the regime has refrained from detonating a nuclear device or launching a long-range missile since Trump met with Kim in Singapore in 2018.

The Biden administration was mindful that it could come under criticism for dithering in the event that North Korea restarts its nuclear provocations. Those concerns became more urgent earlier this month when U.S. intelligence detected signals that North Korea may resume its testing, said three people familiar with the situation who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive subjects. Satellite imagery suggesting an uptick in activity at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear research center published by the 38 North website also worried U.S. officials.

To avoid criticism, Biden administration officials disclosed to a Reuters reporter that U.S. officials reached out to North Korea through several channels starting in mid-February but did not receive a response, said people familiar with the authorized leak. White House press secretary Jen Psaki later confirmed that attempted outreach during a news briefing.

At the time, two constituencies were pushing the administration to engage with North Korea.

Arms control organizations based in Washington, some of whom have a close working rapport with the Biden administration, worried that more North Korean testing could be days away. “There is an urgent need to re-engage with the North because Pyongyang continues to amass more plutonium for nuclear weapons,” said Darryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “The sooner the better.”

That concern was shared by South Korea, whose foreign minister, Chung Eui-yong, called for an “early resumption of dialogue” between the United States and North Korea.

U.S. officials disclosed the outreach efforts to demonstrate that the administration had heard the concerns, said the people.

U.S. officials did not say whether the United States made substantive or significant proposals to North Korea in the outreach. But North Korea’s first vice foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, made clear that the regime was not satisfied with what was communicated.

“We don’t think there is a need to respond to the U.S. delaying-time trick again,” said Choe said. “We will disregard such an attempt of the U.S. in the future too.”

North Korea has not commented on its Sunday missile launches, which puzzled U.S. and South Korean officials. The isolated regime typically hails such developments to underscore its technical prowess.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment about the tests, which were discovered by U.S. officials through intelligence collection efforts outside the country.

Trump minimized North Korea’s launch of short-range missiles during his administration, noting that they did not violate an agreement with Kim in Singapore even though they did violate U.N. resolutions. South Korea also minimized the moves in the hope of nurturing dialogue with the North.

Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University, said that if missile tests were to become public, the Biden administration might take a more confrontational approach given the threat short-range missiles pose to U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan, and U.S. civilians in the region.

Regardless, the Biden administration will be under more pressure to complete its policy review as dangers on the Korean Peninsula become more apparent. So far, South Korean and Japanese officials have advised the Biden administration against reestablishing the six-party talks, a multilateral framework developed during the George W. Bush administration that included China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea, and the United States.

Officials from Tokyo and Seoul told their U.S. counterparts that dealing with North Korea directly would be the most productive format, advice that U.S. officials have taken seriously, according to people familiar with the discussions.

One of the challenges U.S. officials are facing in the review process is how to get countries in the region to cooperate on pressuring North Korea to denuclearize, they said.

“What is becoming clear to the architects of the new policy is how much the ground has shifted in a very short while,” said a person familiar with the discussions. “China is less interested in playing an active diplomatic role in the way it did during six-party talks. Japan and South Korea are at daggers drawn and find it difficult to even sit in the same room together, and Russia’s undermining of the American democracy has complicated any positive role with the United States in this regional endeavor.”

There are also concerns that Kim’s grip on power is less brittle than some analysts anticipated, raising questions about whether the regime can be coerced into giving up its weapons through punishing economic sanctions, a tactic tried by every U.S. administration since the Asian nation’s founding.

“In spite of sanctions, North Korea has managed to build a relatively robust economy for the Pyongyang elite, quite in contrast to the deprivations that were suffered in the late 1990s because of sanctions and famine,” the person said.