The United States has played down a report that North Korea has a nuclear-armed missile. Source: AAP
US Secretary of State John Kerry is demanding North Korea abandon an expected missile launch as the communist state threatens a nuclear strike on Japan amid a chilling new evaluation of its offensive capability.
Kerry, visiting Seoul to give strong US backing to military ally South Korea, joined President Barack Obama in decrying North Korea's incendiary rhetoric and urged China to step in.
The air of crisis that has engulfed the region for weeks, since North Korea staged a rocket launch and atomic test, was given even greater menace from a US intelligence report that said it may now have a nuclear warhead in its arsenal.
US and South Korean military officials downplayed the assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), but Pyongyang warned of dire results if Japan executes its threat to shoot down any North Korean missile.
The North's Korean Central News Agency said that such a "provocative" intervention would see Tokyo - an enormous conurbation of 30 million people - "consumed in nuclear flames".
"Japan is always in the cross-hairs of our revolutionary army and if Japan makes a slightest move, the spark of war will touch Japan first," KCNA said in a commentary.
Unbowed, an official at Japan's defence ministry told AFP that the country "will take every possible measure to respond to any scenario", while Kerry warned that a North Korean missile launch would be a "huge mistake".
"The rhetoric that we are hearing from North Korea is simply unacceptable by any standards," he told a news conference in Seoul alongside South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se.
"The United States, South Korea and the entire international community... are all united in the fact that North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power," Kerry added.
"If (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-un decides to launch a missile, whether it's across the Sea of Japan or any other direction, he will be choosing wilfully to ignore the entire international community.
"It will be a huge mistake for him to do that because it will further isolate his country," Kerry said, adding that North Koreans want food, not a leader "who wants to flex his muscles".
Kerry also that it was high time for China - whose trade and aid have propped up North Korea since the end of the Cold War - to intervene with its wayward ally if it truly wants to safeguard regional stability.
"China has an enormous capability to make a difference here," he said.
Intelligence officials in Seoul say the North, as a show of force, has two mid-range missiles ready for imminent launch from its east coast, and South Korea and Japan remained on heightened alert for any test.
Observers believe a launch is most likely in the build-up to Monday's anniversary of the birth of late founder Kim Il-sung, for which celebrations are already well under way in Pyongyang.
The mid-range missiles mobilised by the North are reported to be untested Musudan models with an estimated range of up to 4000 kilometres.
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