Both Korean leaders, US signal turn to diplomacy amid crisis

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea's military today presented leader Kim Jong Un with plans to launch missiles into waters near Guam and "wring the windpipes of the Yankees," even as both Koreas and the United States signaled their willingness to avert a deepening crisis, with each suggesting a path toward negotiations.

The tentative interest in diplomacy follows unusually combative threats between President Donald Trump and North Korea amid worries that Pyongyang is nearing its long-sought goal of accurately being able to send a nuclear missile to the U.S. mainland.

Next week's start of U.S.-South Korean military exercises that enrage the North each year makes it unclear, however, if diplomacy will prevail.

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. 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 the United States should "think reasonably and judge properly" to avoid shaming itself, the news agency said.

Lobbing missiles toward Guam, a major U.S. military hub in the Pacific, would be a deeply provocative act from the U.S. perspective, and a miscalculation on either side could lead to a military clash. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said the United States would take out any such missile seen to be heading for American soil and declared any such North Korean attack could mean war.

Kim's comments, however, with their conditional tone, seemed to hold out the possibility friction could ease if the United States made some sort of gesture Pyongyang considered a move to back away from previous "extremely dangerous reckless actions."