N Korea fires missiles, skips meeting in warning to Trump

Bloomberg

North Korea greeted US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s latest trip to Asia with twin signals of frustration: test-firing missiles and withholding top diplomats from a chance at
nuclear talks.
Kim Jong-un’s regime fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea on Wednesday, the South Korean military said, the second such test in less than a week. The launches came just hours ahead of Pompeo’s arrival in Bangkok for a regional summit, a stop that the top US diplomat acknowledged wouldn’t include an anticipated meeting with the North Koreans.
The moves were the latest in a series of escalating efforts by Kim to extract a better offer from President Donald Trump before resuming negotiations over his nuclear programme.
More than a month after Trump and Kim agreed to restart working-level talks after their historic handshake at the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, the chances of meeting seem further away.
“If North Korea wanted to hold talks with the US in Bangkok, they would have sent a delegation that is the right level,” said Shin Bum-cheol, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in South Korea.
“They are continuing to pressure the US before they hold these working-level talks to get to a more flexible state.”
While Trump has repeatedly indicated that he won’t let Kim’s launch of short-range ballistic missiles disrupt negotiations, the tests are banned under United Nations sanctions and the weapons threaten South Korea as well as thousands of American troops there. Kim has given Trump until the end of the year to make a better offer, a deadline that has raised the specter that North Korea could resume nuclear tests in a US election year.
Since the June 30 meeting between Trump and Kim, North Korea has touted a new submarine, fired off two rounds of missiles and raised repeated objections to military exercises that the US plans to hold next month with South Korea. North Korea’s foreign ministry warned that the drills could force the regime to reconsider its moratorium on major weapons tests.
Although Kim appears determined to preserve his relationship with Trump, he wants the US show a greater willingness to relax the sanctions squeezing his country’s economy.
“We knew the launches weren’t going to be the end for now,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based analyst with NK Pro. “That said, latest launches seem to track with the behaviour North Korea has shown vis-a-vis the US over the past few months of escalating pressure without crossing the line.”
The launches from North Korea’s Hodo Peninsula began on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said. The missiles flew as far as 250 kilometres and reached an altitude of 30 kilometres.