North Korea said on Monday that it is not frightened by US threats of possible pre-preemptive military action to halt its nuclear and missile buildup and that the country is fully ready to go to war.
A spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry slammed US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's recent talk of tougher sanctions, more pressure, and possible military action, and said the North would not be deterred in its nuclear program.
'The US should face up to the situation of the world with its eyes wide open. The DPRK has the will and capability to fully respond to any war the US would like to ignite,' Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) cited an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
'If the businessmen-turned US authorities thought that they would frighten (North Korea), they would soon know that their method would not work,' he said, making an indirect reference to President Donald Trump and his wealthy cabinet picks.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is considering sweeping sanctions aimed at cutting North Korea off from the global financial system and seizing Kim Jong-un's assets outside the country, a senior US official said on Monday.
<img src="
<img src="
The sanctions would be part of a multi-pronged approach of increased economic and diplomatic pressure - especially on Chinese banks and firms that do the most business with North Korea - plus beefed-up defenses by the United States and its South Korean and Japanese allies, according to the administration official familiar with the deliberations.
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry told KCNA that North Korea would defend its people, even if that means going to war.
'The nuclear force of (North Korea) is the treasured sword of justice and the most reliable war deterrence to defend the socialist motherland and the life of its people,' the spokesman said.
Tillerson recently visited Japan, South Korea and China on trip that focused on North Korea's nuclear program.
On Friday, he signaled a tougher strategy that left open the possibility of preemptive military action.
'Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended,' he said after visiting the heavily militarized border between the rival Koreas. 'We are exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table.'
A day earlier, in Japan, Tillerson had described the past 20 years of US policy toward North Korea as a failure and vowed a comprehensive policy review under US President Donald Trump.
<img src="
But while the long-standing option of preemptive military strikes against North Korea is not off the table the new administration is giving priority for now to less-risky options.
The policy recommendations being assembled by President Donald Trump's national security adviser, HR McMaster, are expected to reach the president's desk within weeks, possibly before a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in early April, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. North Korea is expected to top the agenda at that meeting.
It is not clear how quickly Trump will decide on a course of action, which could be delayed by the slow pace at which the administration is filling key national security jobs.
The White House declined comment.
Trump met McMaster on Saturday to discuss North Korea and said afterward that the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, was 'acting very, very badly.'
The president spoke hours after North Korea boasted of a successful rocket-engine test, which officials and experts think is part of a program aimed at building an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United States.
On Saturday, North Korea conducted a ground test of a new type of high-thrust rocket engine that leader Kim Jong Un called a revolutionary breakthrough for the country's space program, KCNA reported.
North Korea has accelerated its weapons development, violating multiple UN Security Council resolutions without being deterred by sanctions.
<img src="
It conducted two nuclear test explosions and 24 ballistic missile tests last year. Experts say it could have a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the US mainland within a few years.
Pyongyang has rapidly expanded its facilities for enriching uranium and plutonium production in recent years, Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told the Wall Street Journal.
In January, South Korea said the North had enough plutonium to make 10 nuclear bombs, as well as a 'considerable' ability to produce weapons based on highly-enriched uranium.
The North has boosted plutonium supplies by reactivating its once-mothballed nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.
An administration source said US officials, including Tillerson, had privately warned China about broader 'secondary sanctions' that would target banks and other companies that do business with North Korea, most of which are Chinese.
The move under consideration would mark an escalation of Trump's pressure on China to do more to contain North Korea. It was not clear how Chinese officials responded to those warnings but Beijing has made clear its strong opposition to such moves.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the situation on the Korean peninsula was at a crossroads and there were two prospects.
One, she said, was that the relevant parties could continue to 'escalate toward conflict and potential war'.
<img src="
<img src="
The objective of the US move being considered would be to tighten the screws in the same way that the widening of sanctions - to encompass foreign firms dealing with Iran - was used to pressure Tehran to open negotiations with the West on its suspected nuclear weapons program.
That effort ultimately led to a 2015 deal to restrict Iran's nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
For such measures to have any chance to influence the behavior of North Korea, which is already under heavy sanctions, Washington must secure full international cooperation - especially from China, which has shown little appetite for putting such a squeeze on its neighbor.
Analysts also have questioned whether such sanctions would be as effective on North Korea as they were on a major oil producer such as Iran, given the isolated nation's limited links to the world financial system.
North Korea has relied heavily on illicit trade done via small Chinese banks. So, to be applied successfully, the new measures would have to threaten to bar those banks from the international financial system.
Also under consideration are expanded efforts to seize assets of Kim and his family outside North Korea, the official said.
KIM JONG-UN RELEASES PROPAGANDA VIDEO WHERE NORTH KOREA 'BLOWS UP' A US AIRCRAFT
Kim Jong-Un released a military propaganda video depicting North Korean troops blowing up a US aircraft carrier.
The strange clip posted on Saturday by state media shows fictional footage of North Korean troops joyously destroying American planes and bombers.
A female narrator gleefully exclaims over the war footage 'a knife will be stabbed into the throat of the carrier, while the bomber will fall from the sky after getting hit by a hail of fire' according to Yonhap News Agency.
The video shows 'Foal Eagle' military drills with America and South Korea which have long angered the North Korean government according to Newsweek.
Uriminzokkiri, the YouTube page where the video was published, has hosted other controversial clips which depict North Korean troops bombing America.
<video controls="controls" src="https://video.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2017/03/21/349319293606737700/1024x576_MP4_349319293606737700.mp4" width="480" height="385"></video>
<img src="
<img src="
In 2013 it published a video showing a North Korean man dreaming of missiles raining down upon Washington, D.C. and New York.
The video comes as Kim threatened to reduce the US 'to ashes' with nuclear weapons if American fires 'even a single bullet' at North Korea.
Pyongyang said it would use its 'invincible Hwasong rockets tipped with nuclear warheads' to defend its territory as tensions with South Korea continued to escalate.
It comes as Seoul insisted North Korea's latest rocket-engine test showed 'meaningful' progress and as an an analyst said the secretive state had taken a dangerous step towards its goal of developing a rocket that could hit the United States.
The statement, from Kim Jong-Un's Foreign Office, was released earlier this month before the latest tests.
It said: 'The Korean People's Army will reduce the bases of aggression and provocation to ashes with its invincible Hwasong rockets tipped with nuclear warheads and reliably defend the security of the country and its people's happiness in case the US and the south Korean puppet forces fire even a single bullet at the territory of the DPRK.'
<img src="
Last night, the North's KCNA news agency said its new rocket engine would help the state achieve world-class satellite-launch capability, indicating a new type of rocket engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The North's announcement of a successful engine test came as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Beijing at the end of his first visit to Asia for talks dominated by concern about North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes.
'Through this test, it is found that engine function has made meaningful progress but further analysis is needed for exact thrust and possible uses,' Lee Jin-woo, deputy spokesman for the South Korean defence ministry, told a regular briefing.
State-run North Korean media reported that leader Kim Jong Un had hailed the successful test of a new high-thrust engine at its rocket launch station as 'a new birth' of its rocket industry.
Lee said the test featured a main engine supported by four supplementary engines.
However, he did not elaborate on the progress the test showed the North had made, nor comment on whether the engine could be used for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), saying the South Korean military was conducting analysis.
<img src="
<video controls="controls" src="https://video.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2017/03/19/5402388725339829426/1024x576_MP4_5402388725339829426.mp4" width="480" height="385"></video>
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters he held meetings on North Korea at the weekend at his Florida resort. While he did not refer specifically to the rocket-engine test, he said Kim Jong Un was 'acting very, very badly'.
A South Korean analyst said the test was an ominous development.
'This was a comprehensive test for the first-stage rocket for an ICBM, and that is why it was dangerous,' said Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies.
'It appears that North Korea has worked out much of its development of the first-stage rocket booster.'
North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests and a series of missile launches in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and is believed by experts and government officials to be working to develop nuclear-warhead missiles that could reach the United States.
North Korean leader Kim said in January his country was close to test-launching an ICBM. That would put parts of the United States in range.
<img src="
Last week, Tillerson issued the Trump administration's starkest warning yet to North Korea, saying in Seoul that a military response would be 'on the table' if it took action to threaten South Korean and U.S. forces.
The United States has long called on China to do more to rein in its ally, North Korea. China resents being pressed to do more, saying the problem is between North Korea and the United States, although it too objects to the North's nuclear programme.
No formal agreements were announced during Tillerson's visit to China although the two sides said they would work together to try to make North Korea take 'a different course'.
China has called for a dual-track approach on North Korea, urging it to suspend its tests and the United States and South Korea to suspend military exercises so both sides can return to talks.
Beijing has also been infuriated by the deployment of an advanced U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea, which it says will both harm China's own security and do nothing to ease tensions.
China says the system's powerful radar will extend into the country's northeast and potentially track Chinese missile launches, and maybe even intercept them. Russia also opposes the system, for the same reasons.