Asia/Pacific

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.

American and South Korean forces are "ready today" should North Korea attack, Adm. Samuel Locklear said.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said Tuesday that the Obama administration should pressure Beijing to intervene with North Korea, as tensions on the Korean peninsula continued to escalate.

"We need to find what we can do with China, because China could end this tomorrow," Ayotte told Fox News.

The New Hampshire lawmaker said it was especially important to cool the waters because North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong Un, was young and politically untested.

As North Korea warned foreigners visiting the South to evacuate ahead of a potential military strike, American voters say their concern about war in the region has hit an all-time high according to a new poll from CNN and ORC.

According to the survey, 41 percent of Americans now view North Korea as an "immediate threat" to the United States. Another 41 percent of those surveyed say the North should be viewed as a long-term threat, with just 16 percent viewing the country as not an issue.

On Tuesday, North Korea told foreign visitors to the South that they risked involvement in a "merciless, sacred, retaliatory war" if they remained in the country. It was the latest in a series of bellicose threats from the North, which in recent weeks has cut off economic and diplomatic ties and shifted missiles to its coast. But despite the rhetoric from Pyongyang, most foreign policy experts say the regime is unlikely to mount an actual military attack.

The Taliban will retain control over wide swaths of Afghanistan for decades after U.S. and allied forces leave the country in 2014, said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday.

"If we were having this conversation 10 years from now, I suspect there would be contested areas because the history of Afghanistan suggests that there will always be contested areas," Gen. Martin Dempsey told the Associated Press in an interview from Afghanistan.

"I don’t know what kind of game this young man is playing," said McCain of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.