By Julian Ryall, Tokyo
12:08PM GMT 29 Mar 2013
States in photos taken in Kim Jong-un's military command centre
The images show a chart marked "US mainland strike plan" and missile trajectories that the NK News
web site estimates terminate in Hawaii, Washington DC, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.
The meeting of the Pyongyang's senior military leaders was called after two US B2 bombers, flying
out of bases in Missouri, carried out simulated bombing raids on North Korean targets on an island
off the coast of South Korea.
"He finally signed the plan on technical preparations of strategic rockets, ordering them to be on
standby to fire so that they may strike any time the US mainland, its military bases in the operational
theatres in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in South Korea," the state-run KCNA
news agency reported.
It added that the B2 test flights demonstrated Washington's "hostile intent" and said the "reckless" act
had gone "beyond the phase of threat and blackmail."
The North's military was placed on its highest alert level earlier this week and a hotline link with the
South Korean military was severed.
North Korea has also cut the mobile Internet link for foreign visitors, only weeks after the 3G service
was introduced.
Despite the increasingly belligerent rhetoric and new images emerging from the North Korean
regime, analysts believe its missiles are not capable of striking targets as far away as the US mainland
and are not, as yet, capable of delivering a nuclear payload.
The images of Kim surrounded by his officers and diagrams of targets in the US are designed for a
domestic consumption and to demonstrate the young leader's mastery of military affairs, experts
believe.
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