North Korea is ready to launch a new missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, a Russian lawmaker told the state-run RIA Novosti agency.
The mood in North Korea is “rather belligerent” said Anton Morozov, a member of the Russian Duma who visited Pyongyang for five days this month, Russia’s state-run Sputnik News agency reported.
“They are preparing for a new test of a longer-range missile,” Morozov said. “They even gave us mathematical calculations that they believe prove that their missile can hit the western coast of the United States.”
Morozov’s claims come on the heels of a warning from a Central Intelligence Agency official that North Korea’s communist dictator Kim Jong Un is likely to test-fire a missile on Tuesday.
The timing is in sync with Pyongyang’s preference for carrying out arms tests on major holidays in North Korea and the U.S., the Mirror reported. On Tuesday, North Korea is set to celebrate the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea. If the missile is fired on Tuesday morning, it will be Monday in the U.S. with Americans celebrating Columbus Day.
Morozov said that an intervention is necessary in the Korean Peninsula to prevent war.
Kim has continued to pursue the development of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the U.S. despite increased sanctions by the United Nations, spearheaded by the administration of President Donald Trump.
Trump, who refers to Kim as “Little Rocket Man”, has threatened the total destruction of North Korea if the U.S. or its allies are endangered, but neither the economic sanctions nor blunt threats from Trump seem to have deterred Kim, who fired two missiles over Japan last month. Both rockets crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
Trump’s offensive on North Korea is consistent with his opposition to communism and socialism. Trump views both ideologies as disastrous and murderous. North Korea is an example of a late-stage communist regime, with millions of people destitute and in terror.
The country is covered with dozens of large-scale labor camps where hundreds of thousands of people are feared to have perished. Meanwhile, the majority of the population is starving, with most of the resources going towards Kim’s dream of building a nuclear missile.
Kim also tested what Pyongyang claims to have been a hydrogen bomb recently.
The 38North website run by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins, estimated the “unthinkable” human cost of a war in the Korean Peninsula. If North Korea detonated bombs over Seoul and Tokyo with its current nuclear weapon yields, 2.1 million people would be killed and 7.7 million injured.