Korea 2013... War Game or political game changer?

TerraN_EmpirE said:

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The north is now warning foreign civilians to get out of the south.

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No sense of panic in NKorean capital

Scores of North Koreans of all ages planted trees as part of a forestation campaign — armed with shovels, not guns. In the evening, women in traditional dress danced in the plazas to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the late leader Kim Jong Il's appointment to a key defense post.

Despite another round of warnings from their leaders of impending nuclear war, there was no sense of panic in the capital on Tuesday.

Chu Kang Jin, a Pyongyang resident, said everything is calm in the city.

"Everyone, including me, is determined to turn out as one to fight for national reunification ... if the enemies spark a war," he added, using nationalist rhetoric common among many North Koreans when speaking to the media.

The North's latest warning, issued by its Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, urged foreign companies and tourists to leave South Korea.

"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the South Korean puppet warmongers and their moves for a war against" North Korea, the committee said in a statement carried by state media on Tuesday.

There was no sign of an exodus of foreign companies or tourists from South Korea.

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the statement "more unhelpful rhetoric."

"It is unhelpful, it is concerning, it is provocative," he said.

The warning appeared to be an attempt to scare foreigners into pressing their governments to pressure Washington and Seoul to act to avert a conflict.

Analysts see a direct attack on Seoul as extremely unlikely, and there are no overt signs that North Korea's army is readying for war, let alone a nuclear one.

North Korea has been girding for a showdown with the U.S. and South Korea, its wartime foes, for months. The Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula still technically at war.

In December, North Korea launched a satellite into space on a rocket that Washington and others called a cover for a long-range missile test. The North followed that with an underground nuclear test in February, a step toward mastering the technology for mounting an atomic bomb on a missile.

Tightened U.N. sanctions that followed drew the ire of North Korea, which accused Washington and Seoul of leading the campaign against it. Annual U.S.-South Korean military drills south of the border have further incensed Pyongyang, which sees them as practice for an invasion.

Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un enshrined the pursuit of nuclear weapons — which the North characterizes as a defense against the U.S. — as a national goal, along with improving the economy. North Korea also declared it would restart a mothballed nuclear complex.

Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on Tuesday that he concurred with an assessment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., calling the tension between North Korea and the West the worst since the end of the Korean War.

"The continued advancement of the North's nuclear and missile programs, its conventional force posture, and its willingness to resort to asymmetric actions as a tool of coercive diplomacy creates an environment marked by the potential for miscalculation," Locklear told the panel.

He said the U.S. military and its allies would be ready if North Korea tries to strike.

Heightening speculation about a provocation, foreign diplomats reported last week that they had been advised by North Korea to consider evacuating by Wednesday.

However, Britain and others said they had no immediate plans to withdraw from Pyongyang.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who has sought to re-engage North Korea with dialogue and humanitarian aid since taking office in February, expressed exasperation Tuesday with what she called the "endless vicious cycle" of Seoul answering Pyongyang's hostile behavior with compromise, only to get more hostility.

U.S. and South Korean defense officials have said they've seen nothing to indicate that Pyongyang is preparing for a major military action.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said there was "no specific information to suggest imminent threat to U.S. citizens or facilities" in South Korea. The U.S. Embassy has neither changed its security posture nor recommended U.S. citizens take special precautions, he said.

Still, the United States and South Korea have raised their defense postures, as has Japan, which deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors in key locations around Tokyo on Tuesday as a precaution against possible North Korean ballistic missile tests.

In Rome, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the tensions as "very dangerous" and said that "any small incident caused by miscalculation or misjudgment" may "create an uncontrollable situation."

Also Tuesday, citing the tension, North Korea pulled out more than 50,000 workers from the Kaesong industrial park, which combines South Korean technology and know-how with cheap North Korean labor. It was the first time that production has been shut down at the complex, the only remaining product of economic cooperation between the two countries that began about a decade ago when relations were much warmer.

Other projects from previous eras of cooperation such as reunions of families separated by war and tours to a scenic North Korean mountain have been suspended in recent years.

Though the North Korean Foreign Ministry advised foreign embassies to evacuate, tourism officials are continuing to welcome visitors.

National carrier Air Koryo's daily flight from Beijing was only half full on Tuesday. Flight attendants in red suits and blue scarves artfully kept in place by sparkling brooches betrayed no sense of fear or concern.

Tourist Mark Fahey, a biomedical engineer from Sydney, Australia, said he thought a war was "pretty unlikely."

Fahey, a second-time visitor to North Korea, said he booked his trip to Pyongyang six months ago, eager to see how the country might have changed under Kim Jong Un. He said he chose to stick with his plans, suspecting that most of the threats were rhetoric.

"I knew that when I arrived here it would probably be very different to the way it was being reported in the media," he told The Associated Press at Pyongyang airport. He said his family trusts him to make the right judgment, but "my colleagues at work think I am crazy."

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plawolf said:

Not even the US has that many spysats.

The risk has never been about NK launching an all out attack as that is just a slow way for Chubbys to commit suicide and take a lot of people with him. The risk is of a small incident and miscalculation and/or misundertandings spiralling out of control and starting a domino effect which ends with everyone in all out war before anyone can rein it in.

Something small like SK, US or Japan intercepting a NK missile test could be exactly the kind of thing that spark it all off, because hands up anyone who thinks for a minute that if a NK missile is shot down that Chubbys will just shrug and say 'fair play' and call it quits? If that happens, NK is going to look for some way to 'retaliate', and whatever that something is, it will almost certainly be more proactive and dangerous than firing more missiles at the sea.

Another NK attempt to take out a SK navy ship or shelling across the boarder could very easily see a major SK retaliatory strike, which leads to another NK 'retaliatory' strike, and petty soon it will boil over and acquire a momentum all of its own and be too big for anyone to stop easily.

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asif iqbal said:

North Korea has moved 2 medium range missiles to its East Coast, all major military activitys inside North Korea are being monitored, troop movements and any movements near suspected nuclear sites, basically US, Japan and South Korea can see what is going on and at most a missile test will likely go ahead with it being intercepted by missile shield

they dont need to even fly over North Korea to see whats happening, American spy satellites are monitoring everything right down to the -T, i bet the CIA has live feed of whats going on inside North Korea

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April 12, 2013
In Seoul, Kerry Warns North Korea Against Missile Test
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
SEOUL, South Korea — Secretary of State John Kerry warned North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, on Friday not to proceed with a test launch of its Musudan missile and underscored that his nation would be defeated if a conflict broke out.

The missile has a range of up to 2,500 miles, according to American officials, which means it has the potential to strike targets in South Korea, all of Japan and even Guam. South Korean officials said earlier this week that North Korea has made preparations to test the missile and an American official told reporters on Friday that a launch could come at any time.

There has been speculation that Mr. Kim will order the launch to commemorate the anniversary on Monday of the birth of Kim Il-sung, his grandfather and the founder of North Korea, or that it might be fired while Mr. Kerry is in the region.

“If Kim Jong-un decides to launch a missile, whether it is across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community,” Mr. Kerry said at a news conference after meeting with President Park Geun-hye and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se of South Korea.

“It’s not going to change our current position, which is very, very clear: we will defend our allies,” Mr. Kerry added.

American officials have not detected efforts by the North Koreans to mobilize forces or make serious war preparations. And Mr. Kerry said the greatest risk would be a conflict that arose out of a series of provocations and miscalculations by North Korea, not a deliberate attack. Still, he underscored the risks.

“Kim Jong-un needs to understand, as I think he probably does, what the outcome of the conflict would be,” Mr. Kerry said in a pointed reference to the United States and South Korean military capabilities.

With tensions running high on the Korean Peninsula, Mr. Kerry arrived in here Seoul, the South Korean capital, on Friday in an effort to reassure American allies in the region that the United States remained committed to their defense. It is his first visit to South Korea.

Besides stops in South Korea and Japan, Mr. Kerry will also visit China to urge officials there to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Reiterating the longstanding American position, Mr. Kerry said the United States would never accept North Korea as a nuclear state. Talks involving the United States and North Korea, he said, could take place only if Mr. Kim agreed to move to denuclearization.

“They simply have to be prepared to live up to their international obligations and standards, which they have accepted, and make it clear they will move to denuclearization as part of the talks and those talks can begin,” Mr. Kerry said. “But they have to be really serious.”

At the same time, Mr. Kerry applauded efforts by the South, which has called for dialogue with North Korea.

The disclosure on Thursday that the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded with “moderate confidence” that North Korea was capable of launching a missile with a nuclear warhead, albeit an unreliable one, was the subject of much attention here.

An American official who briefed reporters here and who is familiar with North Korea's military capabilities asserted that was “premature” to conclude that it had mastered the challenges of miniaturizing a nuclear warhead and connecting it to a multistage missile.

Mr. Kerry stressed that United States wanted China, to which he will travel on Saturday, to use its influence with North Korea to persuade it to denuclearize.

The United States also wants China to crack down on the illicit flow of funds that move through front companies and banks that the North Korean government is using to support its nuclear weapons program, according to a senior State Department official who traveled on Mr. Kerry’s plane and spoke on the condition of anonymity, following diplomatic protocol.

“We want to see them do what we do, what the Japanese do, what the South Koreans do, which is to stick to U.N. Security Council resolutions” and “stop those money trails,” the official said.

Whether the Chinese will prove more helpful then they have in the past remains unclear. The United States has long sought to enlist China’s cooperation in reining in North Korea's nuclear aspirations. But that has not stopped North Korea from conducting three nuclear tests and testing ballistic missiles.

“We are not privy to conversations between China and North Korea,” said the senior State Department official, who stressed that the United States wanted China “to put more sense of urgency” in its discussions with North Korea.

Complicating the equation, the United States does not have a good sense of how decisions are being made in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

A working assumption, however, is that Mr. Kim’s bellicose statements are intended to shore up his power at home and assure the North Korean military that it will retain the first claim on resources — what policy analysts call the “military first” policy.

But that raises the question of how susceptible a North Korean leader who is preoccupied with building up his authority at home might be to outside pressure, let alone the disarmament agenda urged by the United States and its allies.

“If you believe in Korean culture, it is difficult to believe that a 29-, 30-year-old would have complete control over bureaucracy, over military, over giving orders,” the State Department official said.

“His real goal, of course, is regime survival,” the official said. “That North Korea as an entity, as a nation, should survive with a Kim legacy. So I still believe that is the ultimate goal and that is what he is trying to do.”

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April 11, 2013
Pentagon Finds Nuclear Strides by North Korea
By THOM SHANKER, DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — A new assessment by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm has concluded for the first time, with “moderate confidence,” that North Korea has learned how to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile.

The assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been distributed to senior administration officials and members of Congress, cautions that the weapon’s “reliability will be low,” apparently a reference to the North’s difficulty in developing accurate missiles or, perhaps, to the huge technical challenges of designing a warhead that can survive the rigors of flight and detonate on a specific target.

The assessment’s existence was disclosed Thursday by Representative Doug Lamborn, Republican of Colorado, three hours into a budget hearing of the House Armed Services Committee with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. General Dempsey declined to comment on the assessment because of classification issues.

But late Thursday, the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., released a statement saying that the assessment did not represent a consensus of the nation’s intelligence community and that “North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear armed missile.”

In another sign of the administration’s deep concern over the release of the assessment, the Pentagon press secretary, George Little, issued a statement that sought to qualify the conclusion from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has primary responsibility for monitoring the missile capabilities of adversary nations but which a decade ago was among those that argued most vociferously — and incorrectly — that Iraq had nuclear weapons.

“It would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the passage,” Mr. Little said.

A spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry, Kim Min-seok, said early Friday that despite various assessments. “we have doubt that North Korea has reached the stage of miniaturization.”

Nonetheless, outside experts said that the report’s conclusions could explain why Mr. Hagel has announced in recent weeks that the Pentagon was bolstering long-range antimissile defenses in Alaska and California, intended to protect the West Coast, and rushing another antimissile system, originally not set for deployment until 2015, to Guam.

Also Thursday, Mr. Clapper sought to tamp down fears that North Korean rhetoric could lead to an armed clash with the United States, South Korea and regional allies, and a high South Korean official called for dialogue with North Korea.

Mr. Clapper told a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee that in his experience, two other confrontations with the North — the seizure of the Navy spy ship Pueblo in 1968 and the death of two military officers in a tree-cutting episode in the demilitarized zone in 1976 — stoked much greater tensions between the two countries. The statement by the South Korean official, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae, was televised nationally, and it represented a considerable softening in tone by President Park Geun-hye’s government.

Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, was scheduled to arrive in Seoul on Friday and to travel to China and Japan after that. He has two principal goals on the last leg of a six-nation trip: to encourage China to use its influence to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program while reassuring South Korea and Japan that the United States remains committed to their defense.

The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency last month was titled “Dynamic Threat Assessment 8099: North Korea Nuclear Weapons Program.” Its executive summary reads: “D.I.A. assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles; however the reliability will be low.”

A spokesman for Mr. Lamborn, Catherine Mortensen, said the material he quoted during the hearing was unclassified. Pentagon officials said later that while the report remained classified, the one-paragraph finding had been declassified but not released. Republicans in Congress have led efforts to increase money for missile defense, and Mr. Lamborn has been critical of the Obama administration for failing to finance it adequately.

North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests, including one this year, and shot a ballistic missile as far as the Philippines in December. American and South Korean intelligence agencies believe that another test — perhaps of a midrange missile called the Musudan that can reach Japan, South Korea and almost as far as Guam — may be conducted in the coming days, to celebrate the birth of Kim Il-sung, the country’s founder. At the Pentagon, there is particular concern about another missile, yet untested, called the KN-08, which may have significantly longer range.

“North Korea has already demonstrated capabilities that threaten the United States and the security environment in East Asia,” Mr. Clapper told the House Intelligence Committee.

He added that “we believe Pyongyang has already taken initial steps” toward fielding what he called a “road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile.” He appeared to be referring to the KN-08, provided to North Korea by a Russian company and based on the design of a Russian submarine-launched nuclear missile.

Mr. Clapper referred to “extremely belligerent, aggressive public rhetoric towards the United States and South Korea” by the North’s young president, Kim Jong-un. And he made it clear that getting inside Mr. Kim’s head, and understanding his goals, had been particularly frustrating.

He suggested that while Mr. Kim’s grandfather and father had clear motives — to periodically threaten the world with nuclear crises, then wait to get paid in cash, food or equipment to lower the rhetoric — the younger Mr. Kim apparently intended to demonstrate both to North Koreans and to the international community that North Korea deserves respect as a nuclear power.

“His primary objective is to consolidate, affirm his power,” Mr. Clapper told the House committee, adding that “the belligerent rhetoric of late, I think, is designed for both an internal and an external audience.”

Asked if the North Korean leader had an “endgame,” Mr. Clapper said, “I don’t think, really, he has much of an endgame other than to somehow elicit recognition from the world and specifically, most importantly, the United States, of North Korea as a rival on an international scene, as a nuclear power, and that that entitles him to negotiation and to accommodation, and presumably for aid.”

Other officials have said, in background interviews, that Mr. Kim is trying to get North Korea into the same position as Pakistan: an acknowledged nuclear power that the West has given up hopes of disarming.

Mr. Clapper appeared with the heads of several other intelligence agencies, including Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn of the Defense Intelligence Agency; the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III; and the C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, to present their annual assessment of the threats facing the nation. The same officials briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee last month.

Even as they sought to explain the North Korean leader’s recent bellicose threats, which have prompted American and South Korean troops to increase alert levels, Mr. Clapper and other top intelligence officials acknowledged that United States spy agencies do not know much about Mr. Kim.

“Kim Jong-un has not been in power all that long, so we don’t have an extended track record for him like we did with his father and grandfather,” Mr. Brennan said. “That’s why we are watching this very closely and to see whether or not what he is doing is consistent with past patterns of North Korean behavior.”

Mr. Clapper added that with such little information on Mr. Kim, “there’s no telling how he’s going to behave.”

“He impresses me as impetuous, not as inhibited as his father became about taking aggressive action,” he added. “The pattern with his father was to be provocative and then to sort of back off. We haven’t seen that yet with Kim Jong-un.”

As for what might change the North’s posture, Mr. Clapper pointed to China’s new leadership. “I think probably if anyone has real leverage over the North Koreans, it is China,” he said.

Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Manas, Kyrgyzstan, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul.

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12 April 2013 Last updated at 08:00 ET
US warns N Korea missile launch would be 'huge mistake'
COMMENTS (355)
US Secretary of State John Kerry has said an anticipated missile launch by North Korea would be a "provocative act" and "huge mistake".
The North has moved two missiles to its east coast and South Korea is on alert.
Speaking in Seoul, Mr Kerry reconfirmed the US's commitment to protecting itself and its allies.
But he played down a US report that the North has a nuclear warhead, saying it was "inaccurate" to suggest it has "a working and tested" device.
A declassified section of a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report had warned there was "moderate" confidence that Pyongyang had developed the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.
'Food not missiles'
North Korea will mark the birth of national founder Kim Il-sung on 15 April, a date which could be used for a missile launch.
It has moved two Musudan ballistic missiles to its east coast. Estimates of their range vary, but some suggest the missiles could travel 4,000km (2,500 miles).
That would put US bases on Guam within range, although it is not believed that the Musudan has been tested before.
In a joint news conference with his South Korea counterpart, Mr Kerry said that if Northern leader Kim Jong-un decided to go ahead with a launch "he will be choosing wilfully to ignore the entire international community, his own obligations which he has accepted, and it will be a provocative and unwanted act that will raise people's temperature".
"It is a huge mistake for him to choose to do that because it will further isolate his people ... who are desperate for food not missile launches, who are desperate for opportunity not for a leader who wants to flex his muscles in this manner," he said.
Mr Kerry said that in his talks with South Korean President Park Geun-hye she had made clear her "bright vision" of a peaceful Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons.
"We are prepared to work with conviction that relations between the North and South can improve and can improve very quickly," he said.
"The world will be much better off if the leaders of the North, and one leader in particular, can make the right decision."
On Saturday Mr Kerry will move on to China. He said he would urge leaders there to use their influence to rein in Pyongyang's aggression. He will then travel to Japan.
Mr Kerry said it was "clear to everybody in the world that no country in the world has as close a relationship or as significant an impact on [North Korea] than China", and that talks there would aim to "lay out a path that will defuse this tension".
His hope, he said, was that from talks in China and Japan "we will find the unity necessary to provide a very different set of alternatives for how we can proceed and ultimately diffuse this situation".
On Thursday, China carried out a civilian emergency drill in a town near its border with the North.
China's state media said the half-hour exercise covered evacuations and responses to an air raid and was aimed at raising public awareness of disaster prevention and relief.
North Korea has increased its warlike rhetoric following fresh UN sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and joint military manoeuvres by the US and South Korea.
The North says it will restart a mothballed nuclear reactor, has shut an emergency military hotline to the South and has urged countries to withdraw diplomatic staff, saying it cannot now guarantee their safety.

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11 April 2013 Last updated at 19:04 ET
G8 ministers condemn North Korea nuclear moves
COMMENTS (999)
Foreign ministers from the G8 group of nations have condemned in the "strongest possible terms" North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.
Tensions have risen on the Korean peninsula in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, a Pentagon spy report concluded "with moderate confidence" that North Korea had the capability to launch nuclear-armed missiles.
But their reliability would be low, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) said.
It is thought to be the first time that the agency has acknowledged North Korea's capability to produce warheads small enough to fit onto a missile.
The report's conclusion was made public by Republican Doug Lamborn as he questioned senior Pentagon officials about North Korea's nuclear weapons programme during a hearing of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
"DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles, however the reliability will be low," Mr Lamborn said, quoting directly from the report released in March.
The study's conclusion was erroneously marked unclassified, an unnamed US official later told the Associated Press news agency.
'Belligerent approach'
In a news conference after the G8 summit, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said that "if the DPRK [North Korea] conducts another missile launch or nuclear test, we have committed ourselves to take further significant measures".
The Group of Eight nations comprises the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia.
Britain currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the G8 and the talks are a prelude to the annual G8 summit later this year in Northern Ireland.
Correspondents say Japan, present at the talks, had been looking for a strong statement of solidarity over Korea.
North Korea has been making bellicose threats against South Korea, Japan and US bases in the region.
Mr Hague said the ministers condemned North Korea's "current aggressive rhetoric", saying it would "only serve further to isolate the DPRK".
Later on Thursday, US President Barack Obama also called on North Korea to end its "belligerent approach".
He added that the US would take "all necessary steps" to protect its people, while stressing that "nobody wants to see a conflict on the Korean peninsula".
BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says ministers agree that the combination of warlike threats from North Korea and preparations for new missile tests amount to dangerous provocation.
South Korea has raised its alert level amid indications that the North is preparing for a missile test.
Pyongyang has moved two Musudan ballistic missiles to its east coast. Estimates of their range vary, but some suggest it could travel 4,000km (2,500 miles).
A missile therefore has the potential of hitting US bases on Guam, although it is not known whether the Musudan has been tested before.
North Korea has increased its fiery rhetoric following fresh UN sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test and joint military manoeuvres by the US and South Korea.
The North says it will restart a mothballed nuclear reactor, has shut an emergency military hotline to the South and has urged countries to withdraw diplomatic staff, saying it cannot now guarantee their safety.
However, in the past few days North Korea's media appear to be in more of a holiday mood, due to the approach of Kim Il-sung's birthday on Monday - a potential launch date for a new missile test.
Humanitarian assistance
The G8 ministers also pledged to work to end sexual violence in conflict, calling for urgent action to address "comprehensively" the "culture of impunity" in conflict zones.
Mr Hague said he was "delighted" that ministers had agreed on plans to tackle "the horrific use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war in conflicts around the globe", which he described as "one of the greatest and most persistent injustices in the world".
Mr Hague said the G8 had "committed to the development of a comprehensive international protocol on the investigation and documentation of rape and sexual violence in conflict".
The UK announced £10m ($15.4m) of fresh funding to supports efforts against sexual violence.
In a statement welcoming the moves, the Save the Children charity said: "The majority of victims of sexual violence, especially in conflict situations, are children so we must ensure these funds reach the most vulnerable children as a matter of urgency."
The UN special envoy for refugees, Angelina Jolie, said that wartime rape should not be regarded as inevitable, saying: "It can be prevented and must be confronted.
"Finally we have some hope to offer victims."
On Syria, Mr Hague admitted that "the world has failed so far in its responsibilities, and continues to do so", adding that divisions over the conflict continue.
"This is on track to be the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st Century so far," he added.
Ministers called for greater humanitarian assistance to Syrians affected by the conflict.
They affirmed their support for a "political transition", but did not mention any punitive measures against President Bashar al-Assad.
Fresh evidence of links between some opposition fighters and al-Qaeda has made it even harder for governments to decide a course of action, correspondents say.
G8 ministers met Syrian opposition figures on Wednesday on the sidelines of the two-day forum.
More than 60,000 people are estimated to have died since the uprising against the government of President Assad began in March 2011.
The London talks were also the first chance for G8 ministers to discuss face-to-face the failure of last week's meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on curbing Iran's nuclear programme.
Mr Hague called that failure "disappointing".
"We will continue to work with the twin-track approach of sanctions and negotiations, but... the window of diplomacy will not remain open forever," he went on.
Tehran says it only wants to produce energy but the US and its allies suspect it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon.
Burma, Somalia and cyber-security were also topics on the agenda.

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Japan's Self Defense Forces to save own citizens in NK

Japan has said it is prepared to amend its laws to make it possible for its Self Defense Forces to rescue its citizens who have been abducted to North Korea, according to a report in Sankei News.


The report said senior officials of the Defense Ministry have discussed the issue with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and there has been a general consensus on introducing the legislation.

“We must have a legislation to provide care for Japanese citizens who are abducted,” said Vie Defense Minister Shu Watanabe.

Reviews are currently underway on how and what the legislation will cover, another senior defense official said.

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Gov't confirms Pyongyang link in March cyber attacks

Amid escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula, the South Korean government on Wednesday announced that North Korea was behind the massive hacking attack that paralyzed networks of local financial firms and broadcasters last month.

Three South Korean banks -- Shinhan, NongHyup and Jeju -- and their insurance affiliates as well as three TV broadcasters -- KBS, MBC and YTN -- were hit by the cyber attack as malicious code infected some 48,000 computers in their networks on March 20.

Following the initial attack, 58 YTN affiliate servers and 14 anti-Pyongyang Web sites, including those operated by North Korean defectors, also suffered another round of attacks on March 25 and 26.

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Hagel says N. Korea nearing 'dangerous line'

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel warned Wednesday that North Korea has come very close to a "dangerous line" with its sharp statements iand provocative steps.

"North Korea has been, with its bellicose rhetoric, its actions, has been skating very close to a dangerous line," he said during a press conference at the Pentagon. "Their actions and words have not helped defuse a combustible situation."

He emphasized that North Korea's threats should be ratcheted down and its actions "neutralized."

Hagel met with media mainly to discuss the department's budget plans for next year. But the first question from reporters was about the North Korean crisis.

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