SEOUL, July 25 (Reuters) – North Korea test-fired two new short-range missiles on Thursday, South Korean officials said, the first such launch since leader North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to revive stalled denuclearisation talks last month.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry urged the North to stop acts that are unhelpful to easing tension, saying the tests posed a military threat.

It was not immediately clear if the missiles used ballistic technology which would be a breach of U.N. Security Council resolutions targeting North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programs.

At least one of the two missiles North Korea test fired on Thursday was a newly developed design and flew some 690 km (428 miles), an official at South Korea’s defense ministry told Reuters, adding that a detailed analysis was being done to verify if the two missiles were the same model. 

North Korea launched the missiles from the east coast city of Wonsan with one flying about 430 km (267 miles) and the other 690 km (428 miles) over the sea. They both reached an altitude of 50 km (30 miles), an official at South Korea’s Defence Ministry said.

Some analysts said the North appears to have retested missiles it fired in May, but two South Korean military officials said the missiles appeared to be a new design.

The launch casts new doubt on efforts to restart denuclearisation talks after Trump and Kim met at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas at the end of June.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho had been expected to meet on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian security forum in Bangkok next week.

But a diplomatic source told Reuters on Thursday that Ri had canceled his trip.

The White House, Pentagon and U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

South Korea had detected signs prior to the launch and was conducting detailed analysis with the United States, the presidential Blue House said in a statement.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the test had no immediate impact on Japan’s security, according to Kyodo News.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has taken a hard line towards North Korea, made no mention of the launches in a tweet on Thursday after a visit to South Korea. He said he had “productive meetings” on regional security.

South Korea’s nuclear envoy, Lee Do-hoon, had phone calls with his U.S. counterpart, Stephen Biegun, and his Japanese counterpart, Kenji Kanasugi, to share their assessment, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a briefing that Beijing had noted the launch, calling for North Korea and the United States to reopen negotiations “as early as possible.”

‘CLEAR MESSAGE’

After Trump and Kim met last month, the United States and North Korea vowed to hold a new round of working-level talks soon, but Pyongyang has since sharply criticized upcoming joint military drills by U.S. and South Korean troops.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry accused Washington this month of breaking a promise by holding military exercises with South Korea. On Tuesday, Kim inspected a large, newly built submarine from which ballistic missiles could be launched.

“By firing missiles, taking issue with military drills and showing a new submarine, the North is sending one clear message: there might be no working-level talks if the United States doesn’t present a more flexible stance,” said Kim Hong-kyun, a former South Korean nuclear envoy.

Kim Dong-yup, a former navy officer who now teaches at Kyungnam University in Seoul, said the weapons tested on Thursday appeared to be the same as the ones tested in May, which were less of a challenge than long-range missiles but “enough to subtly pressure” Washington.

But the South Korean military believes they may be new, because they traveled further. In May, the projectiles flew only 420 km (260 miles) and 270 km (168 miles) though they reached the same altitude of about 50 km (30 miles).

“We’re very cautious because it’s difficult to extend the range within such a short time,” said one military official, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Nuclear talks between North Korea and the United States stalled after a second summit between Trump and Kim in Vietnam in February broke down.

Trump has repeatedly lauded the North’s freeze in weapons testing as he is keen for a big foreign policy win as he campaigns for re-election in 2020.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee, Josh Smith and Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom and Idrees Ali in WASHINGTON, and Huizhong Wu in BEIJING Editing by Nick Macfie)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — “Medicare-for-all” is quickly becoming a rallying cry for many Democratic White House hopefuls, but there are growing questions about how to pull off such a dramatic switch to a government-run health care system.

The debate over scrapping private insurers has heated up in recent days since Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a supporter of “Medicare-for-all,” told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Who of us has not had that situation, where you’ve got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, well, I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this? Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

But since her nationally televised remarks, several of Harris’ rivals have pointedly spoken about their plans to work toward universal health care in more pragmatic, incremental ways. Those Democrats portray the single-payer health care proposal they’ve backed as only one strategy to achieve universal coverage, while emphasizing the importance of other, less sweeping paths.

Among the skeptics, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said “Medicare-for-all” would “bankrupt for us for a very long time.”

Uniting Democrats is a desire to guarantee coverage for all, including an estimated 29 million people who remain uninsured. Some are backing a plan that would let people buy into Medicare, with tax credits from the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.

At the forefront of the debate is Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders’ ‘Medicare-for-all” bill, which holds out the promise of health care as a right, the potential for national savings from reduced administrative costs and government price-setting, and no more copays, deductibles or surprise medical bills. His plan envisions a four-year transition, phasing in the change by age groups. Simultaneously, some big tax increases would be taking effect.

But there would be enormous challenges to put in place a single-payer health insurance with the government fully in control of the $3.5 trillion U.S. health care system, experts say. And polls show a looming political problem because many people don’t yet realize it would mean giving up their private coverage. Another issue: Sanders’ office says his plan would cover abortion, a major change from current federal laws and policies.

In addition to Harris, Democratic Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have signed onto the Sanders bill.

Gillibrand, who crafted language in Sanders’ bill that allows people to buy nonprofit insurance coverage during the transition, emphasized the importance of that bridge.

“If more people buy into Medicare over whatever your transition period is, you will disrupt the insurance market . because you’ve created more competition for lower prices and quality care,” Gillibrand told The Associated Press.

“What I like about where the Democrats are today is, we have four or five versions of ‘Medicare-for-all’,” she added. “I think we all want to get to single payer. And I think the best way to do it is what I wrote in Sen. Sanders’ bill.”

Booker, who declared his own candidacy on Friday, told a satellite radio show that day that he is “a big believer in ‘Medicare-for all’- but I believe that if we give people a quality public option, we’re going to be able to get more people into the system.”

And Warren, for her part, told Bloomberg TV last week that “multiple bills on the floor in the United States Senate” would accomplish her core priority of ensuring that “every American has health care at a price they can afford.”

Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sherrod Brown of Ohio also describe universal health care as an ultimate goal, but neither has signed onto Sanders’ legislation. Brown has called for the expansion of Medicare to those over 50 as a more workable first step, while Klobuchar said in a recent interview that “on health care, there’s a lot more that unites us in the Democratic Party.”

“One, we do not want to repeal” Obamacare, she added. “Two, we want to expand Medicaid . three, we want to improve on that as well as get to universal coverage.”

Others are less sanguine about a single-payer approach. “We can’t pay for it, it eliminates choices, most versions…would make private health care coverage for almost all health care needs illegal, and it will diminish quality and access,” said former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

Among non-candidates, Kathleen Sebelius, former Health and Human Services secretary under President Barack Obama, said Democrats should debate a full range of options.

“I think this is a great opportunity to put plans on the table and hopefully not have an early litmus test that says we only want to talk about one idea,” said Sebelius. “I want to talk about 15 ideas.”

A long-time supporter of single-payer said Democrats should tread carefully. Now retired from political office, former Democratic congressman Jim McDermott of Washington said, “A single-payer system would be best if we had a magic wand, but in the real world it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to make this change.”

The last industrialized nation to transition to a single-payer system was Taiwan in 1995. Princeton health policy analyst Tsung-Mei Cheng, who studied the Taiwan experience, said she believes the Democratic candidates are doing poorly explaining pros and cons.

“I don’t think that the full information that would really help voters is out there,” she said. “You need to offer more specifics, and first of all about financing.”

___

Associated Press writers Elana Schor and Juana Summers contributed to this report.

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