NATIONAL SECURITY/NORTH KOREA/REX TILLERSON/STATE: “Hours after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson praised him for exercising restraint, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared in state media visiting a missile-development factory and ordering the production of more warheads and rocket engines.
Mr. Kim’s visit, the date of which wasn’t disclosed by Pyongyang in its report Wednesday [8-23-17], underscores North Korea’s continued investment in its ability to threaten the continental U.S. with a nuclear-tipped long-range missile.
At a Tuesday news briefing in Washington, Mr. Tillerson said he was ‘pleased to see that the regime in Pyongyang has certainly demonstrated some level of restraint that we have not seen in the past,’ referring to its abstention in carrying out missile tests or other acts of aggression.
But even when the regime hasn’t been actively test-launching missiles—which the U.S. terms ‘provocations’—it has been making rapid headway on its weapons technology.
North Korea didn’t test-fire any missiles between October last year and February this year, according to a database compiled by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. But after that relatively long hiatus, North Korea test-launched 14 missiles in a little more than five months, including two intercontinental ballistic missiles and other shorter-range missiles that demonstrated new capabilities.”
-Jonathan Cheng, “Kim Jong Un Shown Ordering More Warheads After Tillerson’s Praise for ‘Restraint’,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 23, 2017 07:34am