INTERVIEW – PETER BROOKES – Senior Fellow, National Security Affairs, Heritage Foundation

TOPIC: North Korea Is Said to Be Readying Ballistic Missile Test

• US military options on North Korea ‘very ugly’ (CNN) Despite new threats from the Trump administration, the US still has no real, practical military option on North Korea, analysts say. After Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon Sunday, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said the US has “many military options” on North Korea and threatened Pyongyang with “a massive military response” if a US territory or US allies are targeted. But any US military action puts millions of civilians in the South Korean capital of Seoul at risk, analysts say, and is therefore very unlikely to happen. For years, the problem with any US military action against North Korea’s nuclear program has been the mass of conventional artillery Pyongyang keeps in range of Seoul, a metropolitan area of 25 million people. Experts say North Korea could kill tens of thousands of those civilians, if not exponentially more, using that artillery in retaliation for a US strike on the North.Pyongyang’s test Sunday of what is thought to be its most powerful nuclear weapon doesn’t change that fact, experts say. But some also say the test doesn’t mean North Korea is any more of an immediate threat to the US or its allies.