Asia/Pacific

The Arizona senator said it was only a "matter of time" until North Korean missiles could deliver nuclear weapons.

Lawmakers who want to bleed North Korea dry say it's past time to consider closing the Kaesong joint industrial park.

Secretary of State John Kerry is in China, asking for help in easing tensions with a bellicose North Korea.

"North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power," the secretary of state said Friday in Seoul.

The White House sought to soothe concerns over North Korea's nuclear capabilities Friday.

Speaking after meeting United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Obama said that no one wanted to see conflict break out.

South Korean officials warned Wednesday that the North could launch a medium-range missile capable of striking Japan and Guam “any time from now,” causing U.S. and South Korean troops on the peninsula to increase their readiness.

Kim Jong-Un's regime has moved at least one Musudan missile to the east coast in preparation for the launch. With a range of about 2,175 miles, the missile would be the longest-range weapon ever tested by North Korea.

“Based on intelligence we and the Americans have collected, it’s highly likely that North Korea will launch a missile,” Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se of South Korea told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday, The New York Times reports. “Such a possibility could materialize at any time from now.”

The State Department dismissed North Korea's warning Tuesday that foreign governments should evacuate their citizens from the South because of the threat of "thermonuclear war."

“There's no solid information to suggest imminent threat to U.S. citizens or facilities in the Republic of Korea, so the U.S. Embassy has not changed its security posture,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Tuesday. “We have not recommended that U.S. citizens who reside in or plan to visit the Republic of Korea take special security precautions at this time.

He said North Korea’s latest warnings “unnecessarily and provocatively escalate tensions.”

U.S. citizens should defer all nonessential travel to Pakistan because of the risks of terrorism, kidnapping and bureaucratic harassment, the State Department said in a travel advisory Tuesday.

“U.S. citizens should ensure that their travel documents and visas are valid at all times. U.S. citizens throughout Pakistan have been arrested, deported, harassed, and detained for overstaying their Pakistani visas or for traveling to Pakistan without the appropriate visa classification,” the travel advisory says. “U.S. citizens who attempt to renew or extend their visas while in Pakistan have been left without legal status for an extended period of time and subjected to harassment or interrogation by local authorities.”

The number of U.S. citizens “arrested, detained, and prosecuted for visa overstays has increased across the country” since 2011, the travel warning says. U.S.-Pakistani relations entered a downward spiral that year after a CIA contractor was arrested for killing two armed robbers, confirming the agency's widespread presence in the country, followed a few months later by the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The government in Pyongyang has said foreigners should evacuate from South Korea because of a looming war.