The chairman of the National Assembly's Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee on Friday charged U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Burwell Bell with being “hasty” when he said North Korea’s more than 800 Scud and Rodong missiles target the South. "The U.S., Russia, and China have thousands if not tens of thousands of long-range missiles, but nobody's making a fuss,” Kim Won-wung said. North Korea, by contrast, has just has a few hundred.

"Commander Bell is a general with responsibility, but there is a limit to how much one commander can see concerning foreign relations issues,” Kim said on PBS radio. "North Korea is clearly stating that it has the missiles to protect itself in case another nation attacks," Kim added. As a “responsible serviceman,” he said, Bell may have been “just a little hasty."

The U.S., the chairman said, has missiles capable of striking China and Russia, “but that is no cause for any of those nations to pre-emptively attack it, and it is not stoking tensions. North Korea has a few hundred."

Kim also called for Japan to be locked out of six-way talks on North Korea's nuclear program. "It seems we have to reconsider if Japan really has the qualifications to be a member of the talks," he said. "Japan continues to bring up issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the six-way talks or the nuclear issue, including the kidnapping of Megumi [Yokota] and others, and it is becoming a stumbling block in the talks."

Kim said if any missiles from North Korea do strike the South, it will be on a U.S. base. The lawmaker declared himself against “any pre-emptive move to attack North Korea and turn the peninsula into a war zone” without South Korea’s consent. But Kim deplored North Korea’s claim earlier this week that South Korea was a beneficiary of the protection afforded by Pyongyang’s "military first" policy. "It wasn’t a helpful statement for anyone,” he said. "It made me think North Korea really has no idea how South Koreans feel."

(englishnews@chosun.com )