Korean War vet from Kettering: China will help ease N. Korea-U.S. tensions

Jim Snyder, a Korean War veteran who served in the Marine Corps, has a hunch that China will play a prominent role in easing the roiling relations between North Korea and the United States.

"We should have stayed up in North Korea and made it just one Korea then," the Kettering resident told News Center 7's James Buechele on Wednesday. "This wouldn't be going on now."

"This" is the latest missile-firing by the North Korean government, which on Tuesday said it successfully fired a "significantly more" powerful, nuclear-capable ICBM it called the Hwasong-15.

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Wednesday, the Trump administration threatened new sanctions on North Korea in the wake of the latest test of an intercontinental ballistic missile some military experts believe could reach Washington and the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.

President Trump tweeted that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Pyongyang's "provocative actions," and vowed that "additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. could target financial institutions doing business with the North.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "declared with pride" that his country has achieved its goal of becoming a "rocket power."

Snyder, who served 14 months in Korea after going into the Marine Corps in 1950, said, “we should have done something a lot sooner.”

This latest missile launch concerns him, he said, as does the talk about possible military action on the part of the United States.

"It has to stop," Snyder said. "You just can't continue on with what he's doing."

He said he hopes cooler heads will end the tension.

"I hope it can be done by negotiations," he said. "And if not, I'm sure it's going to be done another way."

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