North Korea ready to test new high range missile

North Korea is set to test-fire a new "high range" missile capable of hitting the US mainland, a Russian lawmaker claims.
Anton Morozov revealed Pyongyang's plans as he returned from a five-day visit to the hermit state - where the mood is "rather belligerent" - with a Russian delegation.
He claims North Korean officials gave the Russians mathematical calculations showing that the intercontinental ballistic missile could reach targets on the US west coast.
It comes just days after a CIA official revealed that Kim Jong-un's regime could launch a new missile or carry out another nuclear test next week.

North Korea has carried out a number of missile tests recently despite UN sanctions (Image: AFP)

Morozov told the Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti: "They are preparing for a new test of a longer-range missile.
"They even gave us mathematical calculations that they believe prove that their missile can hit the western coast of the United States."
He described the mood in Pyongyang as "rather belligerent", adding: "In the near future, they are going to carry out, as far as we understand, yet another launch of a missile, but this time with a longer range."
He was part of a Russian delegation which made an official visit to Pyongyang this week to discuss bilateral cooperation with the Russian ambassador to North Korea, the English-language state-run Sputnik news agency reported.

Kim Jong-un is pictured in a photo released after his regime's last nuclear test (Image: Barcroft Media)

Morozov, a member of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs, has called for a prompt intervention in the situation on the Korean peninsula to avoid a new war.
Earlier this week, Yong Suk Lee, the deputy assistant director of the CIA's Korea Mission Center, revealed that North Korea's latest provocation could come on Tuesday when it celebrates the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Many past nuclear or missile tests have coincided with mass public celebrations.
A test would coincide with Japan's lower house election campaigns and the Columbus Day holiday in the US. Given the time difference, it would be Monday in the US if a missile or nuclear test occurs in Pyongyang on Tuesday morning.

Despite UN sanctions, North Korea has recently carried out an underground nuclear test and test-fired two missiles over northern Japan, with both crashing into the Pacific Ocean.
Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times op-ed columnist who recently returned to Pyongyang for a visit, wrote that North Korea is galvanising its citizens to expect a nuclear war with the US.
Billboards in the capital show missiles destroying the US Capitol in Washington, DC, he added.
Pyongyang resident Mun Hyok-myong, a teacher, told Mr Kristof during a visit to an amusement park: “If we have to go to war, we won’t hesitate to totally destroy the United States."

A satellite image shows North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site (Image: AFP)

A new report by the website 38 North, which monitors Pyongyang's activities, has suggested that a North Korean nuclear attack on Seoul and Tokyo could kill more than two million people and injure nearly eight million others.
North Korea's state-run news agency, KCNA, reported on Friday that the country's National Peace Committee (NPC) has called on the US to pull its troops out of South Korea.
US forces have been stationed in the South since the Korean War.
The committee said the 64-year-old South Korea-US Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was an "aggressive and traitorous war document" allowing the US to control the South's army, South Korea's state-run Yonhap News Agency reported.

TV coverage of a North Korean missile launched over northern Japan in August (Image: REX/Shutterstock)

The NPC said the agreement is a symbol of "US military occupation" and it has "reduced South Korea into advanced base for a nuclear war".
It added that South Koreans cannot evade a nuclear war as long as US troops are based in their country.
The North and South are technically still at war, as the conflict in the 1960s ended with an armistice and no peace treaty has ever been signed.

This news comes amid a report that states North Korea has a terrifying biological weapons programme capable of wiping out tens of thousands of troops and civilians if war breaks out.
Experts fear the rogue state has developed and stored more than a dozen killer agents that could be fired into South Korea or further if Kim Jong-un ’s regime is threatened.
Among the illnesses it may be able to deliver by missile, bomb or plane-sprayer are Anthrax, Smallpox, the Plague, Botulism, Cholera, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Dystentry and Typhus.

Bacillus bacteria that causes Anthrax (Image: Getty)

There are even many of the killer bio-agents have been tested on human beings, whilst Kim Jong-un’s laboratory technicians are forced to work without protection.
Researchers at intelligence company AMPLYFI teamed up with Harvard in America to harvest the dark web for information about Pyongyang’s 50 year-old bio-weapons programme.
Using an artificial intelligence tool called DataVoyant researchers mined 840,000 websites that contained biological references and 23,000 were found to have links to North Korea.

In their report called North Korea’s Biological Weapons Program, researchers also say image analysis of Pyongyang’s Bio-technical Institute suggests it could “produce military-style batches of biological weapons - specifically anthrax.”
It continues: “The most recent statement by the South Korean Defence Ministry is that ‘North Korea has 13 types of biological weapons which it can weaponise withing ten days.
“And anthrax and smallpox are the likely agents it would deploy."
Meanwhile, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which is seeking a ban on nuclear arms.

North Korean soldiers march during a military parade in Pyongyang in April (Image: AFP)

Berit Reiss-Andersen, the leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said: "We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time.
"Some states are modernising their nuclear arsenals, and there is a real danger that more countries will try to procure nuclear weapons, as exemplified by North Korea."
Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of ICAN, a coalition of grassroots non-government groups, said in response to rising tensions on the Korean peninsula and the war of words between Kim and US President Donald Trump: "Nuclear weapons are illegal. Threatening to use nuclear weapons is illegal.
"Having nuclear weapons, possessing nuclear weapons, developing nuclear weapons, is illegal, and they need to stop."

North Korea's nuclear and missile tests in 2017

February 11: New medium-range Pukguksong-2 (KN-15) ballistic missile launched into Sea of Japan, travelling 310 miles.
March 6: Five medium-range Scud-er ballistic missiles launched into the Sea of Japan, with four travelling more than 600 miles.
March 21: Mobile-launched missile explodes moments after launch in failed test.
April 4: Medium-range KN-17 ballistic missile test-fired into the Sea of Japan, travelling just 34 miles after spinning out of control.
April 15: KN-17 missile explodes almost immediately after take-off.
April 28: KN-17 missile travels just 21 miles before breaking apart in mid-air.
May 14: Missile, believed to be a KN-17, flies about 480 miles before crashing into the Sea of Japan.
May 21: Another KN-17 test, with the projectile travelling more than 300 miles into the same sea.
May 29: A short-range ballistic missile was tracked for six minutes before landing in the sea.
June 8: Anti-ship missiles fired into the Sea of Japan.
July 4: North Korea tests its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), a Hwasong-14 which crashed into the Sea of Japan after travelling about 580 miles.
July 28: Another ICBM is test-fired, flying 621 miles for 45 minutes - the longest flight of a ballistic missile fired by North Korea - before crashing into the sea inside Japan's Economic Exclusion Zone.
August 26: Three short-range ballistic missiles are test-fired, with the second blowing up within seconds and the third failing in flight.
August 29: North Korea fires a KN-17 over northern Japan - sparking evacuations and air raid sirens in towns - and it travels 1,667 miles before breaking apart.
September 3: Pyongyang carries out its sixth test of a nuclear weapon, claiming it was a hydrogen bomb, causing a 6.3-magnitude earthquake. Experts say the device was up to eight times more powerful than the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
September 15: Another ballistic missile - the 14th missile test of the year - is fired over northern Japan, this time flying for about 2,300 miles before hitting the sea.