Opinion | Why most have read North Korea’s threats against Guam all wrong
Pyongyang is highly unlikely to launch missile strikes, but by ‘holding back’ on military strikes it wants to bring the US to the negotiating table, writes Ankit Panda
If you thought the “August crisis” between the United States and North Korea ended when Kim Jong-un decided not to proceed with the launch of four missiles towards Guam, you may be disappointed.
In fact, the coming days hold the key to the whole affair, which is an example of Kim experimenting with the kinds of coercive bargaining opportunities his new long-range missiles give him with the United States.
A good degree of misreporting on the original North Korean threat to Guam obscured the significance of the episode last week when headlines noted that Kim had “backed down”, presumably having been deterred by US President Donald Trump’s blustering threats of “fire and fury”.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Even a perfunctory reading of North Korea’s original threat to strike the waters near Guam with four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles, released on August 8, makes clear that Pyongyang never committed to any action.
Instead, Kim Rak-gyom, the head of North Korea’s strategic ballistic missile development programmes, said that he would present Kim with a plan in mid-August.