BEIJING -- China announced Monday that it will cut off imports of North Korean coal, iron ore and other goods under United Nations sanctions imposed over the North's nuclear and missile programs.
The Commerce Ministry announced a ban on imports of iron ore, iron, lead and coal from North Korea effective today -- although China will continue to clear goods that have already arrived in port until Sept. 5.
"After that, entry of these goods will be prohibited," said an agency statement.
The announcement was followed today by both Koreas and the United States signaling their willingness to avert a deepening crisis, with each suggesting a path toward negotiations.
During an inspection of the North Korean army's Strategic Forces, which handles the missile program, Kim praised the military for drawing up a "close and careful plan" and said he would watch the "foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees" a little more before deciding whether to order the missile test, the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said. Kim appeared in photos sitting at a table with a large map marked by a straight line between what appeared to be northeastern North Korea and Guam, and passing over Japan -- apparently showing the missiles' flight route.
The missile plans were previously announced, and Kim said North Korea would conduct the launches if the "Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous reckless actions on the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity" and that the United States should "think reasonably and judge properly" to avoid shaming itself, the news agency said.
Kim's comments, with their conditional tone, seemed to hold out the possibility that friction could ease if the United States made some sort of gesture that Pyongyang considered a move to back away from previous actions.
The United States would "take out" any North Korean missile seen to be heading for American soil, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Monday.
He declared that such a North Korean attack could lead to war.
Responding to reporters' questions about North Korea's threats on Guam, Mattis made clear he did not want to be seen as escalating the tensions.
"If they fire at the United States, it could escalate into war very quickly," he said. "Yes, that's called war, if they shoot at us."
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, meanwhile, a liberal who favors engagement with the North, urged North Korea to stop provocations and to commit to talks over its nuclear weapons program.
Moon, in a televised speech today on the anniversary of the end of World War II and the Korean Peninsula's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, said that Seoul and Washington agree that the crisis over the North's nuclear program should "absolutely be solved peacefully" and that no U.S. military action on the Korean Peninsula could be taken without Seoul's consent.
Moon said solving the crisis could begin with freezing the North's nuclear weapons program, and the North could create conditions for talks by stopping nuclear and missile tests.
"Our government will put everything on the line to prevent another war on the Korean Peninsula," said Moon. "Regardless of whatever twist and turns we could experience, the North Korean nuclear program should absolutely be solved peacefully, and the [South Korean] government and the U.S. government don't have a different position on this."
The top U.S. military officer said Monday that the United States wants to peacefully resolve the standoff with North Korea but is also ready to use the "full range" of its military capabilities in case of provocation.
The comments by Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford in a series of meetings with senior South Korean military and political officials and the local media appeared to be an attempt to ease anxiety over tit-for-tat threats between Trump and North Korea while also showing a willingness to back up Trump's warnings if need be.
Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is visiting South Korea, Japan and China.
The U.S.-North Korea impasse, which has simmered since the end of the Korean War in 1953, has grown more tense in recent months over worries that the North's nuclear weapons program is nearing the ability to target the U.S. mainland. Pyongyang tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles last month.
The escalation also followed a report that U.S. intelligence indicates North Korea can now put a nuclear warhead on its long-range missiles.
"We are seeking a peaceful resolution to the crisis," Dunford, who also met with Moon, said to reporters, according to a local pool report.
While a U.S. military spokesman said Dunford "affirmed the ironclad commitment of the U.S. to the alliance" with South Korea, he indicated the general also made clear during his meetings in Seoul that military action against North Korea remains a possibility. "He conveyed America's readiness to use the full range of military capabilities to defend our allies and the U.S. homeland," Capt. Darryn James said in a statement.
Dunford stressed that diplomacy and sanctions were the first plan of attack.
"The military dimension today is directly in support of that diplomatic and economic effort," Dunford told reporters after his meeting with Moon.
"It would be a horrible thing were a war to be conducted here on the peninsula, and that's why we're so focused on coming up with a peaceful way ahead," he said, according to Stars and Stripes.
"Nobody's looking for war," the Marine general said, according to the newspaper. But he added that the military's job was to provide "viable military options in the event that deterrence fails."
CHINA WARNS U.S.
At the same time as it announced the import cutoff, Beijing warned Trump not to split the international coalition over North Korea by provoking a trade war between China and the United States.
Trump signed an executive memorandum Monday afternoon instructing his top trade negotiator to launch an investigation into Chinese intellectual property violations, a move that could eventually result in severe trade penalties.
In China, these proposed measures were seen as an attempt to pressure Beijing to act more strongly against North Korea and, at the same time, as an effort to shift the blame for the world's failure to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs onto China alone.
"It is obviously improper to use one thing as a tool to impose pressure on another thing," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying said at a news conference Monday.
The latest U.N. sanctions are intended to block North Korean exports worth $1 billion -- a significant share of total exports valued at $3 billion last year.
China, the isolated North's main trading partner, has been reluctant to push Kim's regime too hard for fear it might collapse. But Beijing is increasingly frustrated with Pyongyang and on Aug. 5 supported a U.N. Security Council ban on coal and other key goods.
China stopped importing North Korean coal in February, but total trade has risen. That prompted Trump to accuse Beijing in July of failing to use its economic leverage to stop Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Other North Korean exports to China include clothing, knitwear and plastic rain ponchos, which appear not to be affected by the latest sanctions.
Beijing had long been Pyongyang's only diplomatic defender but agreed in March 2016 to sanctions against the North after its test of a long-range missile.
North Korean imports of Chinese oil, consumer goods and other products rose 36.7 percent from a year earlier in the first half of this year to $165 million, according to Chinese customs data.
Information for this article was contributed by Joe McDonald, Foster Klug, Hyung-jin Kim, Robert Burns and Kim Tong-Hyung of The Associated Press; by Simon Denyer, Shirley Feng, Yang Liu, Luna Lin, Anna Fifield and Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post; and by Shinhye Kang, Gao Yuan, Janet Ong, Reinie Booysen, Heejin Kim, Nafeesa Syeed, Kenneth Pringle, Min Jeong Lee, Takashi Amano, Justin Blum, Alan Levin, Ben Brody, Peter Pae and Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 08/15/2017