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China Warns its Citizens in North Korea to Leave as Conflict with US Looms
Fearing a possible US attack on North Korea, Beijing is urging its citizens there to return, as Pyongyang continues its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests.
The US-funded Radio Free Asia reported on Tuesday that the Chinese Embassy in North Korea sent out the warning less than a week before the 85th anniversary of the Korean People’s Army on April 25, an occasion some expected the North to use as an opportunity to conduct its sixth nuclear test.
Pyongyang instead conducted a large live-fire drill. Four days after the anniversary, the North carried out a missile test, but the projectile exploded several minutes after launching, a "failure" South Korean officials later surmised was intentional.
Amid holiday celebrations, the nuclear-powered USS Michigan submarine, armed with 150 Tomahawk missiles, joined a US Navy carrier strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson near the Korean Peninsula, in a show of force from Washington.
A Korean-Chinese citizen who left Pyongyang after receiving the warning in late April told Radio Free Asia, "The embassy has never given such a warning. I was worried and left the country in a hurry," according to the Korea Times.
With the recent deployment in South Korea of the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD), Washington’s threats of military action against the North and the US’s ongoing joint military exercises with South Korea, Pyongyang has accused the US of pushing the peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war" with its "aggression and hysteria."
All the views expressed at the source of this article may not necessarily reflect those of T.E.A. Watchers.
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