Mad: Kim Jong Un points a gun - and has threatened to point his missiles at the US . The nail-biting diplomatic tension over North Korea’s nuclear threats increased last night after despot Kim Jong-un targeted long-range missiles at Guam, America’s military foothold in the region. The rogue state’s president ordered two Musudan rockets and launchers – each capable of delivering one-ton warheads – to be set up in the east of his country, within possible striking range of Guam. Experts are divided on the range and accuracy of the untested Musudan rocket – and whether North Korea has the ability to fit it with a nuclear warhead – but the aggressive moves have spooked the US into further bolstering the defences of the Pacific island. The US stronghold in the tropics – its westernmost territory set in deep ocean between the Philippines and Hawaii – is among a list of targets announced by the North Korean leader that also includes South Korea, Japan and even the US West Coast. But Guam islanders defiantly laughed off the idea of a North Korean attack from 2,100 miles away – and insisted it is nothing but a phoney war. ‘My message to North Korea is, “You just try it. We will annihilate you”,’ said bar manager Lisamarie Flores as she mixed drinks beneath portraits of Princess Diana and William and Kate in the Tower of London pub, a favourite haunt for US servicemen. ‘Kim is just a little dictator trying to show that he’s a big man but there’s no way in the world that we’re going to be frightened of him. ‘People in mainland US might get worked up about this but regulars here don’t even talk about it that much. They’re more interested in the finals of the American national basketball tournament than North Korea.’ Lisamarie added: ‘If there was a conflict and it went nuclear, it would be ugly, of course. But it would be North Korea that would be destroyed.’ At 3pm yesterday, on the frontline of a conflict some experts believe might yet explode into the Third World War, young couples strolled and children played in the white sand and surf of a palm-fringed tropical beach. Relax: Despite North Korean nuclear threats, holidaymakers in Guam, US, sit in the sun on Tumon Beach yesterday . Response: A US Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighter like the ones based in Guan at the Andersen Air Force Base . Away from the heat of the seafront, holidaymakers ambled lazily through five-star hotel lobbies and an air- conditioned shopping arcade full of designer shops including Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and Gucci. A few streets further back, the Tower of London was doing a roaring trade in B52 cocktails as regulars cracked jokes and chortled at the idea that their afternoon session might be interrupted by a missile strike. With its beaches and hotels packed yesterday, people in Guam – population 180,000 and catchphrase ‘Where America’s day begins’ – seemed determined to shrug off the North Korean menace and carry on with life as usual. The only unusual sight was on the seafront – thronging with Asian and American tourists – where a row of first aid tents had been erected. It transpired they had not been put up to treat casualties of incoming missiles, but athletes injured in the inaugural Guam Marathon taking place today. Military base: A US C-130 aircraft based in Guam where a defence system will be installed to shoot down incoming missiles and warheads amid threats from North Korea . In a sign of how the growing crisis has failed to disrupt island life, 2,000 athletes, including many US servicemen, will race to a finishing line a few miles from Andersen Air Base where B52 and Stealth bombers – along with the rest of a huge US arsenal – are based. ‘This North Korea business is total nonsense,’ the manager of one five-star hotel in Guam’s premier resort of Tumon Beach told me. ‘Our hotel is nearly full and not one person has cancelled since this crisis began. ‘They couldn’t possibly hit us from there and anything they tried to launch would be taken out of the sky at the push of a button.’ Despite the bravado, there is an underlying concern over the threats from North Korea. Guam governor Eddie Calvo said on Friday that all Kim Jong-un needed was ‘one lucky shot’ to cause ‘a lot of damage to our island home’. America has ordered an air defence system called THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) for Guam – but it will not arrive for weeks and some islanders fear it may come too late if Kim Jong-un orders a strike. Threats: Kim Jong Un, pictured here on a North Korean army ship, has repeatedly threatened to attack the US . ‘Every day there seems to be a new threat from North Korea and something new for us to worry about,’ said a curator at a museum on the island dedicated to the Pacific wars. ‘It really is scary, whatever people might tell you. ‘We were supposed to have 8,000 US Marines sent to Guam from Japan two years ago but they haven’t arrived because of budget cuts.’ However, in the winding roads leading to the heavily-guarded Andersen base, the mood among indigenous islanders who work there and whose families are supported by the army was more positive and defiant. Speaking outside his home near the base, engineer Steve Aldis said: ‘I’m not worried about an attack. I know the US defences would knock out anything North Korea put up into the sky without even having to send a plane up. Everyone is very relaxed. There is no sense of crisis. We think it’s all just talk.’ Foreigners at risk: North Korean official checks the passports of a group of foreign diplomats and tourists as they board a flight. All foreigners in the country have been warned to get out . Back in bustling Tumon Beach, long-term expatriate Ralf Meyer shared the engineer’s confidence. ‘People living in Guam aren’t nearly as wound up about this as people abroad. I had a call from my brother in Europe last night. He said the TV was saying we were on standby for an invasion. I told him we’d get our pool cues and golf clubs and fight them on the beaches when they landed.’ Mr Meyer, who comes from Switzerland where Kim Jong-un went to high school, said he was baffled that the dictator appeared to have turned out to be such an unhinged figure. Threat: A large number U.S. military bases in the Pacific are within range of the new missiles - shown here . Nascent technology: A map from the Federation of American Scientists and the Center for Non-proliferation Studies shows that North Korea's missiles cannot even reach India about 3,100 miles away . ‘Switzerland is a reasonably democratic country and our schools are good. How can he now behave in such a crazy and illogical way? ‘But I guess the truth is it isn’t him – it’s the generals who are controlling this. ‘We aren’t worried though. Why should we be? We know the firepower we have on the US bases here in Guam. I truly believe we are living in the safest place on earth.’ ANALYSIS by JOHN SWENSON-WRIGHT, CHATHAM HOUSE . North Korea’s threats are aimed  at fostering a sense of crisis with the outside world – and creating a siege-mentality to unify its population squarely behind its inexperienced  30-year-old leader, Kim Jong-un. Since he took over from his father, Kim Jong-il, in December 2011, there has been a campaign to present him as a near-omniscient national saviour and military genius with statues, slogans and photographs of him with his frontline troops. Provoking and sustaining a crisis is also a chance for the North to justify its decision to reopen its plutonium and uranium-based facilities at Yongbyon – which it hopes may be used to help expand its nuclear arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Missile threat: A North Korean military vehicle carries a missile through Pyongyang. The pariah state have repeatedly threatened to attack the US and South Korea . But Pyongyang also has a broader international objective. It wants to express its irritation and opposition to new, tougher sanctions introduced after its nuclear test in February. It is objecting, too, to the joint US-South Korean military exercises taking place on and around the peninsula since March and which will continue until April 20. Above all, it wants to have direct talks with the US to enhance its status as a legitimate, independent sovereign state, while prising open the door to further concessions from the West. However, US President Obama wants North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme before he is willing to embark on such talks. Yet as the crisis intensifies it is unclear how long the Americans can maintain this conditional approach. The North has been trying to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul and last week North Korean diplomats in New York reportedly indicated they were prepared to begin dialogue with the new conservative administration of Park Geun-hye in Seoul. Such discussions would be an opportunity, according to the North Koreans, to reactivate a long-term commitment to promoting unification. Seoul’s susceptibility to such talks is potentially a point of difference between Presidents Obama and Park. Danger: The North Korean leader has repeatedly ramped up the rhetoric in recent weeks threatening a military strike . For now, the principal source of concern is the danger of a war occurring through miscalculation or misperception. As the US moves more of its high-profile strategic assets into the region, there is a risk the North will see these as Washington planning to attack the North pre-emptively in the future. There is also a danger that Kim Jong-un will order ever more high- profile provocations that could, in turn, be misread by South Korea and the US as the first step in a more aggressive approach. Pyongyang has a track record of provoking the international community to try to extort political and economic concessions. In two attacks against South Korea in 2010, it shelled an island and appeared to deliberately sink a naval vessel, killing 46 sailors. So often in the Cold War it  was luck rather than rational calculation that prevented conflicts escalating beyond control: national leaders are often poorly equipped to cope with the unexpected when it comes to nuclear weapons. It is worth Obama keeping this in mind in dealing with North Korea. Maintaining deterrence is critically important. But it may be prudent  to combine this with a more imaginative attitude in negotiations to lower the risks in this most volatile of regions.
US are sending a missile defence system to Guam but it will be WEEKS before it arrives .
180,000 people live in Guam which North Korea has threatened to attack .
Mad: Kim Jong Un points a gun - and has threatened to point his missiles at the US . The nail-biting diplomatic tension over North Korea’s nuclear threats increased last night after despot Kim Jong-un targeted long-range missiles at Guam, America’s military foothold in the region. The rogue state’s president ordered two Musudan rockets and launchers – each capable of delivering one-ton warheads – to be set up in the east of his country, within possible striking range of Guam. Experts are divided on the range and accuracy of the untested Musudan rocket – and whether North Korea has the ability to fit it with a nuclear warhead – but the aggressive moves have spooked the US into further bolstering the defences of the Pacific island. The US stronghold in the tropics – its westernmost territory set in deep ocean between the Philippines and Hawaii – is among a list of targets announced by the North Korean leader that also includes South Korea, Japan and even the US West Coast. But Guam islanders defiantly laughed off the idea of a North Korean attack from 2,100 miles away – and insisted it is nothing but a phoney war. ‘My message to North Korea is, “You just try it. We will annihilate you”,’ said bar manager Lisamarie Flores as she mixed drinks beneath portraits of Princess Diana and William and Kate in the Tower of London pub, a favourite haunt for US servicemen. ‘Kim is just a little dictator trying to show that he’s a big man but there’s no way in the world that we’re going to be frightened of him. ‘People in mainland US might get worked up about this but regulars here don’t even talk about it that much. They’re more interested in the finals of the American national basketball tournament than North Korea.’ Lisamarie added: ‘If there was a conflict and it went nuclear, it would be ugly, of course. But it would be North Korea that would be destroyed.’ At 3pm yesterday, on the frontline of a conflict some experts believe might yet explode into the Third World War, young couples strolled and children played in the white sand and surf of a palm-fringed tropical beach. Relax: Despite North Korean nuclear threats, holidaymakers in Guam, US, sit in the sun on Tumon Beach yesterday . Response: A US Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighter like the ones based in Guan at the Andersen Air Force Base . Away from the heat of the seafront, holidaymakers ambled lazily through five-star hotel lobbies and an air- conditioned shopping arcade full of designer shops including Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and Gucci. A few streets further back, the Tower of London was doing a roaring trade in B52 cocktails as regulars cracked jokes and chortled at the idea that their afternoon session might be interrupted by a missile strike. With its beaches and hotels packed yesterday, people in Guam – population 180,000 and catchphrase ‘Where America’s day begins’ – seemed determined to shrug off the North Korean menace and carry on with life as usual. The only unusual sight was on the seafront – thronging with Asian and American tourists – where a row of first aid tents had been erected. It transpired they had not been put up to treat casualties of incoming missiles, but athletes injured in the inaugural Guam Marathon taking place today. Military base: A US C-130 aircraft based in Guam where a defence system will be installed to shoot down incoming missiles and warheads amid threats from North Korea . In a sign of how the growing crisis has failed to disrupt island life, 2,000 athletes, including many US servicemen, will race to a finishing line a few miles from Andersen Air Base where B52 and Stealth bombers – along with the rest of a huge US arsenal – are based. ‘This North Korea business is total nonsense,’ the manager of one five-star hotel in Guam’s premier resort of Tumon Beach told me. ‘Our hotel is nearly full and not one person has cancelled since this crisis began. ‘They couldn’t possibly hit us from there and anything they tried to launch would be taken out of the sky at the push of a button.’ Despite the bravado, there is an underlying concern over the threats from North Korea. Guam governor Eddie Calvo said on Friday that all Kim Jong-un needed was ‘one lucky shot’ to cause ‘a lot of damage to our island home’. America has ordered an air defence system called THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) for Guam – but it will not arrive for weeks and some islanders fear it may come too late if Kim Jong-un orders a strike. Threats: Kim Jong Un, pictured here on a North Korean army ship, has repeatedly threatened to attack the US . ‘Every day there seems to be a new threat from North Korea and something new for us to worry about,’ said a curator at a museum on the island dedicated to the Pacific wars. ‘It really is scary, whatever people might tell you. ‘We were supposed to have 8,000 US Marines sent to Guam from Japan two years ago but they haven’t arrived because of budget cuts.’ However, in the winding roads leading to the heavily-guarded Andersen base, the mood among indigenous islanders who work there and whose families are supported by the army was more positive and defiant. Speaking outside his home near the base, engineer Steve Aldis said: ‘I’m not worried about an attack. I know the US defences would knock out anything North Korea put up into the sky without even having to send a plane up. Everyone is very relaxed. There is no sense of crisis. We think it’s all just talk.’ Foreigners at risk: North Korean official checks the passports of a group of foreign diplomats and tourists as they board a flight. All foreigners in the country have been warned to get out . Back in bustling Tumon Beach, long-term expatriate Ralf Meyer shared the engineer’s confidence. ‘People living in Guam aren’t nearly as wound up about this as people abroad. I had a call from my brother in Europe last night. He said the TV was saying we were on standby for an invasion. I told him we’d get our pool cues and golf clubs and fight them on the beaches when they landed.’ Mr Meyer, who comes from Switzerland where Kim Jong-un went to high school, said he was baffled that the dictator appeared to have turned out to be such an unhinged figure. Threat: A large number U.S. military bases in the Pacific are within range of the new missiles - shown here . Nascent technology: A map from the Federation of American Scientists and the Center for Non-proliferation Studies shows that North Korea's missiles cannot even reach India about 3,100 miles away . ‘Switzerland is a reasonably democratic country and our schools are good. How can he now behave in such a crazy and illogical way? ‘But I guess the truth is it isn’t him – it’s the generals who are controlling this. ‘We aren’t worried though. Why should we be? We know the firepower we have on the US bases here in Guam. I truly believe we are living in the safest place on earth.’ ANALYSIS by JOHN SWENSON-WRIGHT, CHATHAM HOUSE . North Korea’s threats are aimed  at fostering a sense of crisis with the outside world – and creating a siege-mentality to unify its population squarely behind its inexperienced 30-year-old leader, Kim Jong-un. Since he took over from his father, Kim Jong-il, in December 2011, there has been a campaign to present him as a near-omniscient national saviour and military genius with statues, slogans and photographs of him with his frontline troops. Provoking and sustaining a crisis is also a chance for the North to justify its decision to reopen its plutonium and uranium-based facilities at Yongbyon – which it hopes may be used to help expand its nuclear arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Missile threat: A North Korean military vehicle carries a missile through Pyongyang. The pariah state have repeatedly threatened to attack the US and South Korea . But Pyongyang also has a broader international objective. It wants to express its irritation and opposition to new, tougher sanctions introduced after its nuclear test in February. It is objecting, too, to the joint US-South Korean military exercises taking place on and around the peninsula since March and which will continue until April 20. Above all, it wants to have direct talks with the US to enhance its status as a legitimate, independent sovereign state, while prising open the door to further concessions from the West. However, US President Obama wants North Korea to abandon its nuclear programme before he is willing to embark on such talks. Yet as the crisis intensifies it is unclear how long the Americans can maintain this conditional approach. The North has been trying to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul and last week North Korean diplomats in New York reportedly indicated they were prepared to begin dialogue with the new conservative administration of Park Geun-hye in Seoul. Such discussions would be an opportunity, according to the North Koreans, to reactivate a long-term commitment to promoting unification. Seoul’s susceptibility to such talks is potentially a point of difference between Presidents Obama and Park. Danger: The North Korean leader has repeatedly ramped up the rhetoric in recent weeks threatening a military strike . For now, the principal source of concern is the danger of a war occurring through miscalculation or misperception. As the US moves more of its high-profile strategic assets into the region, there is a risk the North will see these as Washington planning to attack the North pre-emptively in the future. There is also a danger that Kim Jong-un will order ever more high- profile provocations that could, in turn, be misread by South Korea and the US as the first step in a more aggressive approach. Pyongyang has a track record of provoking the international community to try to extort political and economic concessions. In two attacks against South Korea in 2010, it shelled an island and appeared to deliberately sink a naval vessel, killing 46 sailors. So often in the Cold War it  was luck rather than rational calculation that prevented conflicts escalating beyond control: national leaders are often poorly equipped to cope with the unexpected when it comes to nuclear weapons. It is worth Obama keeping this in mind in dealing with North Korea. Maintaining deterrence is critically important. But it may be prudent  to combine this with a more imaginative attitude in negotiations to lower the risks in this most volatile of regions.
whether North Korea has the ability to fit it based in Guam where a defence system will be Altitude Area Defence) for Guam – but it will not threatened to attack the US and South Korea . But