North Korea didn’t react to false Hawaii missile alert, Mattis says

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis at a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on on Jan. 9. Michael Reynolds / EPA

Mattis also expressed confidence that authorities in Hawaii would fix their warning system

after the ensuing distress over the false alert turned to anger.

“The state of Hawaii has taken full ownership of the problem. I think that they’ll figure it out,” Mattis said. “I am confident they have good people there in the state government and they’ll figure out what went wrong and they will put procedures in place.”

The Pentagon chief is participating in the summit of foreign ministers in Vancouver to clarify and elaborate what sort of military options could be used if the diplomatic pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions fails. The United Nations Security Council has passed three rounds of sanctions against North Korea for testing ballistic missiles and, in November, an underground nuclear weapon.

“The whole point is to reinforce the diplomatic options and to show that there are military options should there be a DPRK attack,” Mattis said, referring to North Korea by the country’s official initials, which stand for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We’ll show them that there are military options,” he added. “But it is all couched within a framework of strengthening the diplomat’s hands.”

Earlier this year, North and South Korea used a communications hotline for the first time in two years. As a result of initial moves, the North may send an ice-skating delegation to the winter Olympics, hosted by South Korea next month, as well as a 140-member orchestra.

Trump has said he is open to U.S. talks with North Korea at “the appropriate time.”

On Monday, Mattis called the nascent talks between North and South Korea “a positive indicator,” but said it was too early to determine Kim’s intent.

“I don’t think we have sufficient data to say what this indicates as far as the way forward by the Kim regime,” he said. “We just don’t have enough data yet, but I think it is a positive indicator.”