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(CNN) — North Korea’s leader approved a plan to prepare standby rockets to hit U.S. targets, state media said Friday, after American stealth bombers carried out a practice mission over South Korea.
In a meeting with military leaders early Friday, Kim Jong Un “said he has judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation,” the state-run KCNA news agency reported.
The rockets are aimed at U.S. targets, including military bases in the Pacific and in South Korea, it said.
“If they make a reckless provocation with huge strategic forces, (we) should mercilessly strike the U.S. mainland, their stronghold, their military bases in the operational theaters in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in South Korea,” KCNA reported.
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North Korean state media carried a photo of Kim meeting with military officials Friday. In the photo, the young leader is seated, leafing through documents with four uniformed officers standing around him.
On the wall behind them, a map titled “Plan for the strategic forces to target mainland U.S.” appears to show straight lines stretching across the Pacific to points on the continental United States.
South Korea and the United States are “monitoring any movements of North Korea’s short, middle and middle- to long-range missiles,” South Korean Defense Ministry Spokesman Kim Min-seok said Friday.
Kim’s regime has unleashed a torrent of threats in the past few weeks, and U.S. officials have said they’re concerned about the recent rhetoric.
“I think their very provocative actions and belligerent tone, it has ratcheted up the danger, and we have to understand that reality,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday at a news briefing.
Some observers have suggested that Washington is adding to tensions in the region by drawing attention to its displays of military strength on North Korea’s doorstep, such as the flights by the B-2 stealth bombers.
Hagel argued against that assertion.
Threats of annihilation normal for South Koreans
“We, the United States and South Korea, have not been involved in provocating anything,” he said. “We, over the years, have been engaged with South Korea on joint exercises. The B-2 flight was part of that.”
Washington and its allies “are committed to a pathway to peace,” Hagel said. “And the North Koreans seem to be headed in a different direction here.”
But Pentagon spokesman George Little said it was important to remain calm and urged North Korea to “dial the temperature down.”
“No one wants there to be war on the Korean Peninsula, let me make that very clear,” he told CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on Thursday.
Most observers say North Korea is still years away from having the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead on a missile, but it does have plenty of conventional military firepower, including medium-range ballistic missiles that can carry high explosives for hundreds of miles.
