S.Korea to match any N. Korean provocation

North Korea will continue to regularly test missiles and any military action against it by the United States would prompt "all out war", a senior North Korean official told the BBC on Monday.

North Korea is preparing for "any mode of war" triggered by USA military action, Pyongyang's envoy to the United Nations warned today, saying his country would respond to a missile or nuclear strike "in kind".

Donald Trump has warned North Korea it has "gotta behave" as the USA agreed to the early deployment of a missile defence system in the region.

The North Korean deputy ambassador was asked to respond to President Donald Trump's comment that North Korea should "behave better".

On the plane ride over, Pence was informed that the Pyongyang regime had fired off what appeared to be a medium-range missile that exploded only seconds after leaving the launch pad. Even the Korea-U.S. trade agreement could come under scrutiny for "tweaks", the adviser said. For example, during the annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises, USA and South Korean troops practice a "4D" operational plan which involves preemptive military options to detect, disrupt, destroy, and defend against North Korean strikes.

How did we get here?

Kim also said the North Korean authorities had never recognized "the unreasonable resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council against it with the USA double-dealing standard".

Its aim is to be able to put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach targets around the world, including the US.

Trump justified the launching of 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Shayrat airbase in Syria as a response to a chemical attack which he blamed on President Bashar al-Assad' s government, without providing any evidence.

Trump ordered a Navy strike group led by an aircraft carrier to the Western Pacific Ocean last week as a show of force while US officials are mulling increased economic sanctions against North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the opening of the Ryomyong residential area, Thursday, April 13, 2017, in Pyongyang. China banned imports of North Korean coal on February 26, cutting off its most important export.

There is a lot of public support for the deployment of the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea, for example, and for the previous South Korean president's decision to close the jointly operated Kaesong industrial park inside North Korea, Kim says. "We'll closely cooperate with the USA and South Korea to change" the posture of North Korea, Abe said.

At a hastily called news conference Monday in New York, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Kim In Ryong, accused the United States of pushing the Korean peninsula "to the brink of a war", warning that a "thermo-nuclear war may break out at any moment on the peninsula". "The recent U.S. massive missile attack on Syria tells you well of it". "We're not going to sit back and take it".

The new and inexperienced U.S. president has indicated he will not allow North Korea to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the western United States.

"I believe they mean it but I also believe they would use every other creative option, including putting pressure on China to take a role", she said of the Trump administration's plans. Pressure on North Korea is crucial, the prime minister said.

Across the border South Korea's recently impeached president Park Geun Hye, herself the daughter of former dictator Park Chung Hee, was yesterday indicted by prosecutors on corruption charges.

"We seek peace always as a country, as does Japan, but as you know and the United States knows, peace comes through strength and we will stand strongly with Japan and strongly with our allies for a peace and security in this region", Pence added.

The North casts the United States as the aggressor.