SEOUL — South Korea’s defense minister on Monday said it was worth reviewing the redeployment of American tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula to guard against the North, a step that analysts warn would sharply increase the risk of an accidental conflict.

But in New York, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was “begging for war.”

And even as concern over Korea deepened following North Korea’s huge nuclear test Sunday,, South Korea’s defense ministry said Monday that Pyongyang might be preparing to launch another missile into the Pacific Ocean, perhaps an intercontinental ballistic missile theoretically capable of reaching the mainland United States.

President Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, spoke on the phone for 40 minutes Monday night, Korean time — some 34 hours after the nuclear test and more than 24 hours after Trump took to Twitter to criticize Moon’s “talk of appeasement.”

The two agreed to remove the limit on allowed payloads for South Korean missiles — something Seoul had been pushing for — as a way to increase deterrence against North Korea, according to a read-out of the phone call from South Korea’s Blue House.

They agreed as well to work together to punish North Korea for Sunday’s nuclear test, pledging “to strengthen joint military capabilities,” a White House statement said, and to “maximize pressure on North Korea using all means at their disposal.”

In a later phone call, Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel “reaffirmed” the necessity of coordinating a response at the U.N.

At a Security Council meeting, Haley pressed for the “strongest possible” sanctions against the North. The administration plans to circulate a new sanctions draft this week. Haley did not spell out how she would overcome the objections of veto-wielding permanent members China and Russia. 

But she cautioned, “War is never something the United States wants. We don’t want it now. But our country’s patience is not unlimited. We will defend our allies and our territory.”

Haley ruled out the “freeze for freeze” proposal backed by China and Russia, which would suspend U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea in return for suspension of North Korean nuclear and missile tests.

“When a rogue regime has a nuclear weapon and an ICBM pointed at you, you do not take steps to lower your guard. No one would do that. We certainly won’t,” she said.

Instead, she reiterated a White House threat from Sunday to cut off trade with any countries that also trade with North Korea. That would presumably include China, with which the United States had nearly $650 billion worth of trade in goods and services last year.

“The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country that is giving aid to their reckless and dangerous nuclear intentions,” she said.

Her remarks appeared to be unpersuasive. “China will never allow chaos and war” in Korea, said Liu Jieyi, the Chinese ambassador to the U.N. Sanctions alone will not solve the crisis, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said.

[ North Korea defies predictions — again — with early grasp of weapons milestone ]

Earlier Monday, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that he asked his American counterpart, Jim Mattis, during talks at the Pentagon last week for strategic assets like U.S. aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and B-52 bombers to be sent to South Korea more regularly.

“I told him that it would be good for strategic assets to be sent regularly to the Korean Peninsula and that some South Korean lawmakers and media are strongly pushing for tactical nuclear weapons [to be redeployed],” Song told a parliamentary hearing on North Korea’s nuclear test, without disclosing Mattis’s response. 

A poll that YTN, a cable news channel, commissioned in August found that 68 percent of respondents said they supported bringing tactical nuclear weapons back to South Korea.

“The redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons is an alternative worth a full review,” Song said, echoing a position closely associated with conservatives in South Korea, not progressives like Moon, who was elected president in May after vowing to engage with North Korea.

[ Seoul tries to ignore Trump’s criticism: ‘They worry he’s kind of nuts,’ one observer says ]

The United States had about 100 nuclear-armed weapons, including short-range artillery,  stationed in South Korea until 1991. Then President George H.W. Bush signed the Presidential Nuclear Initiative and withdrew all tactical nuclear weapons that had been deployed abroad.

Shortly after, the two Koreas signed an agreement committing to making the peninsula free of nuclear weapons — a deal that North Korea violated by developing its own nuclear arms. But Pyongyang has maintained that Seoul has also broken its promise because remaining under the U.S. nuclear umbrella is tantamount, it says, to having such weapons.

After the defense minister spoke at the hearing, the South Korean president’s office said that it was not considering redeploying tactical nuclear weapons. “Our government’s firm stance on the nuclear-free peninsula remains unchanged,” said Kim Dong-jo, a spokesman for Moon.

Military experts in the United States are almost universally opposed to the idea of deploying strategic or tactical weapons in South Korea.  

“The thing that most concerns me about redeployment is that it introduces more room for miscalculation or unintended escalation,” said Catherine Dill of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. 

In that situation, the ability to react more quickly could be a negative factor.

From the perspective of the military alliance between the United States and South Korea, having long-range ballistic missiles or strategic bombers is “perfectly sufficient” to continue to deter North Korea, Dill said.

As alliance partners, the United States and South Korean militaries work in close cooperation, regularly conducting drills together. This includes sending “strategic assets” like bombers stationed on the Pacific Island of Guam over South Korea on a regular basis, and having submarines make port calls during exercises.

As the North Korean threat has increased this year, the United States has sent F-35 stealth aircraft and other strike fighters on flyovers across the southern half of the peninsula in a not-so-thinly veiled warning to Kim. U.S. Pacific Command even released photos last week of B-1B Lancers dropping bombs on a range on the southern side of the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas.

But a growing number of policymakers in Seoul say that Guam is too far away and that, if it comes under attack from North Korea, South Korea can’t wait the two-plus hours it would take American bombers to arrive from their base in the Pacific. 

“We need these strategic or tactical assets that can destroy North Korea’s nuclear-capable missiles before they can inflict harm on us,” said Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korean national security adviser. 

“Right now they can retaliate but by that time, tens of thousands of people might have been killed,” Chun said. “We need a first layer of offensive weapons stationed closer to North Korea’s nuclear and missile sites.”

Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert who served on President Barack Obama’s national security council, said that in the South Korean context, “strategic assets” were all about giving “a tangible sense of reassurance” to the government in Seoul.

“The reassurance bucket is bottomless,” Wolfsthal said. “You can pour stuff into it and it’s never going to fill up.”

South Korean officials have been asking for fighter jets and ballistic missile-equipped submarines to be based on the peninsula, and have long wanted B-1Bs and B-52s to land rather than just fly over — all to give a sense of greater sense of commitment to South Korea.

But there are good logistical reasons why that can’t happen, said Wolfsthal. For one, South Korea doesn’t have airstrips long enough for big, heavy B-52s, and second, the U.S. does not want its high-tech fighter jets sitting within North Korean artillery range.

[ Don’t be surprised by North Korea’s missiles. Kim Jong Un is doing what he said he would.  ]

South Korea has been also flexing its military muscles by itself in response to North Korea’s provocations, practicing for strikes on the North Korean nuclear test site at Punggye-ri at dawn Monday.

The South Korean air force would stage a live-fire drill, launching Taurus air-to-surface guided missiles from F-15K fighter jets, later this month, the defense ministry said Monday. The missiles have a range of 300 miles — enough to carry out precision strikes on North Korea’s key nuclear and missile sites.

The ministry also said it had seen signs of preparation for another ballistic missile launch and South Korea’s national intelligence service told lawmakers that it could be another intercontinental ballistic missile.

Yoonjung Seo in Seoul and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Trump’s tweets include jab at ally South Korea

Trump: ‘All options are on the table’ after North Korea launched missile over Japan

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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President Trump signaled Sunday that he was not ruling out a retaliatory strike against North Korea in response to the isolated country’s overnight nuclear test, which he called “very hostile and dangerous to the United States.”

Asked as he left church services whether he was planning to attack North Korea after a nuclear test that defied his blunt warnings, Trump told reporters, “We’ll see.”

Trump’s response to North Korea’s announcement that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb that could be attached to a missile capable of reaching the mainland United States included an admonishment of South Korea for its handling of the crisis.

Trump is convening a meeting of his national security team later Sunday to discuss the U.S. strategy, while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he is drawing up tough new economic sanctions to further isolate North Korea.

In a pair of tweets issued Sunday morning, Trump wrote: “North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States . . . North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is running a “rogue nation,” President Trump said. (Saul Loeb; Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)

Trump warned in a fourth tweet, “The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.”

He said he would be meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, White House chief of staff John F. Kelly and other military leaders to discuss options.

“The national security team is monitoring this closely,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. “The president and his national security team will have a meeting to discuss further later today. We will provide updates as necessary.”

After speaking with Trump on Sunday morning, Mnuchin called North Korea’s nuclear test “unacceptable behavior” and said the United States was likely to impose stricter sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s government and further pressure China, in particular, to “cut off” North Korea.

“We’ve already started with sanctions against North Korea, but I’m going to draft a sanctions package to send to the president for his strong consideration that anybody who wants to do trade or business with them is prevented from doing trade or business with us,” Mnuchin said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We are going to work with our allies, we’ll work with China, but people need to cut off North Korea economically. This is unacceptable behavior.”

The tumult in the region comes amid escalating economic tensions with South Korea. Trump is considering withdrawing from a free-trade agreement with South Korea, a long-standing economic and diplomatic partner of the United States.

[Trump preparing withdrawal from South Korea trade deal, a move opposed by top aides]

The move would be in keeping with Trump’s campaign promise to end what he considers unfair trade competition from other countries, but the president’s advisers have cautioned a withdrawal from the agreement would strain ties with South Korea amid the mounting North Korea nuclear crisis.

Asked by Fox anchor Chris Wallace whether Trump would pull the United States out of the agreement, Mnuchin said, “The president has made clear that where we have trade deficits with countries, we’re going to renegotiate those deals.” He added that there have been “no decisions” yet with regard to the trade accord with South Korea.

North Korea’s nuclear test came just a few hours after Trump spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a key ally in the region.

In a Saturday evening phone call, the two leaders discussed “ongoing efforts to maximize pressure on North Korea,” according to the White House.

“The two leaders reaffirmed the importance of close cooperation between the United States, Japan and South Korea in the face of the growing threat from North Korea,” read a statement from the White House.

Trump also spoke recently with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. In a call on Friday, the two leaders talked about “our coordinated response to North Korea’s continued destabilizing and escalatory behavior,” according to the White House, which said Trump and Moon agreed conceptually to South Korea purchasing billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment.

North Korea’s testing of its most powerful nuclear device yet comes just 3 1 / 2 weeks after Trump warned Kim that his continued nuclear provocations would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

[Trump reiterates warning to N. Korea: ‘Fire and fury’ may not have been ‘tough enough’]

Initially, North Korea seemed to back down from its threat of a nuclear strike in Guam, where many U.S. military are stationed. Trump said of Kim at an Aug. 22 rally in Phoenix, “I respect the fact that, I believe, he is starting to respect us.”

That assessment turned out to be premature. North Korea’s test this weekend drew alarm from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

“North Korea right now is the most dangerous place on the face of the planet,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said on ABC’s “This Week.” Cruz said of Kim, “He is radical, he is unpredictable, he is extreme, and he is getting more and more dangerous weapons.”

Although Cruz said he would chose his words differently than Trump, the senator defended the president’s bellicose rhetoric.

“I think the president is right that Kim Jong Un and other bullies only understand and respect strength, that weakness, that appeasement encourages this action,” Cruz told ABC anchor Martha Raddatz.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) differed, saying Trump’s rhetoric is inadvisable.

“I don’t think that it’s helpful to get into a Twitter shouting match with a 32-year-old dictator, Kim Jong Un, in North Korea,” Castro told Raddatz in a separate interview. He said Trump should “let his diplomats and his military generals and others handle this situation.”

Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, stressed that Trump’s tweets are fouling up his otherwise respectable plan to get tough on North Korea.

“You gotta watch the tweets,” Hayden said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Mr. President, this is not a manhood issue; this is a national security issue. Don’t let your pride get in the way of wise policy here.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said he spoke Sunday morning with Kelly about the situation.

“We stand ready to work with the administration to support a comprehensive strategy that not only places an emphasis on deterrence but also empowers our allies and partners in the region, who must do more to confront this threat,” Corker said in a statement.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said that “there are no good options” to manage the North Korea crisis but that “harsh rhetoric” does not appear to help slow Kim’s nuclear program.

Flake said that ending the U.S.-South Korea trade agreement, as Trump is considering, would be inadvisable.

“I don’t think that that would be good in any circumstances,” Flake said on CNN. “Now it’s particularly troubling given what South Korea is faced with. I think we need to do more trade, not less, and withdrawing from trade agreements is a very troubling sign.”

Karoun Demirjian and Hamza Shaban contributed to this report.

By all accounts, the head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit was professional and restrained when she told a Salt Lake City police detective he wasn’t allowed to draw blood from a badly injured patient.

The detective didn’t have a warrant, first off. And the patient wasn’t conscious, so he couldn’t give consent. Without that, the detective was barred from collecting blood samples — not just by hospital policy, but by basic constitutional law.

Still, Detective Jeff Payne insisted that he be let in to take the blood, saying the nurse would be arrested and charged if she refused.

Nurse Alex Wubbels politely stood her ground. She got her supervisor on the phone so Payne could hear the decision loud and clear. “Sir,” said the supervisor, “you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse.”

Payne snapped. He seized hold of the nurse, shoved her out of the building and cuffed her hands behind her back. A bewildered Wubbels screamed “help me” and “you’re assaulting me” as the detective forced her into an unmarked car and accused her of interfering with an investigation.

On Friday, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said he wanted a criminal investigation into the incident. Salt Lake Mayor Jackie Biskupski and Police Chief Mike Brown apologized to the nurse in a statement. “I extend a personal apology to Ms. Wubbels for what she has been through for simply doing her job,” the mayor said.

The explosive July 26 encounter was captured on officers’ body cameras and is now the subject of an internal investigation by the police department, as the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The videos were released by the Tribune, the Deseret News and other local media.

On top of that, Wubbels was right. The U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that blood can only be drawn from drivers for probable cause, with a warrant.

Wubbels, who was not criminally charged, played the footage at a news conference Thursday with her attorney. They called on police to rethink their treatment of hospital workers and said they had not ruled out legal action.

“I just feel betrayed, I feel angry, I feel a lot of things,” Wubbels said. “And I’m still confused.”

Salt Lake police spokesman Sgt. Brandon Shearer initially told local media that Payne had been suspended from the department’s blood draw unit but remained on active duty. But late Friday, the police department’s Twitter feed said that Payne and another unnamed officer had been placed on administrative leave.

It all started when a suspect speeding away from police in a pickup truck on a local highway smashed head-on into a truck driver, as local media reported. Medics sedated the truck driver, who was severely burned, and took him to the University of Utah Hospital. He arrived in a comatose state, according to the Deseret News. The suspect died in the crash.

A neighboring police department sent Payne, a trained police phlebotomist, to collect blood from the patient and check for illicit substances, as the Tribune reported. The goal was reportedly to protect the trucker, who was not suspected of a crime. His lieutenant ordered him to arrest Wubbels if she refused to let him draw a sample, according to the Tribune.

A Salt Lake City police detective handcuffed a nurse after she prevented him from collecting blood from an unconscious patient. (Screen grab via Deseret News)

In Thursday’s news conference, Wubbels’s attorney Karra Porter said that Payne believed he was authorized to collect the blood under “implied consent,” according to the Tribune. But Porter said “implied consent” law changed in Utah a decade ago. And in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that warrantless blood tests were illegal. Porter called Wubbels’s arrest unlawful.

“The law is well-established. And it’s not what we were hearing in the video,” she said. “I don’t know what was driving this situation.”

Wubbels has worked as a nurse at the hospital since 2009, according to the Tribune. She was previously an Alpine skier who competed under her maiden name in the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics.

As a health-care worker, she said it was her job to keep her patients safe.

“A blood draw, it just gets thrown around like it’s some simple thing,” she said, according to the Deseret News. “But your blood is your blood. That’s your property.”

For now, Wubbels is not taking any legal action against police. But she’s not ruling it out.

“I want to see people do the right thing first and I want to see this be a civil discourse,” she said Thursday, according to the Deseret News. “If that’s not something that’s going to happen and there is refusal to acknowledge the need for growth and the need for re-education, then we will likely be forced to take that type of step. But people need to know that this is out there.”

What I saw on the video last night is completely unacceptable. @ChiefMikeBrown I apologize for these actions. https://t.co/N62TtQlHdr

— Mayor J. Biskupski (@slcmayor) September 1, 2017

This story has been updated. 

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When the hurricane blew in, workers at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Tex., faced the problem of keeping the plant’s volatile chemicals cold. The plant had 19.5 tons of organic peroxides of various strengths, all of them requiring refrigeration to prevent ignition.

But the power went out, and then the floodwaters came and knocked out the plant’s generators. A liquid nitrogen system faltered. In a last-ditch move, the workers transferred the chemicals to nine huge refrigerated trucks, each with its own generator, and moved the vehicles to a remote section of the plant.

That was doomed to fail, too. Six feet of water swamped the trucks, and the final 11 workers gave up. At 2 a.m. Tuesday, they called for a water evacuation and left the plant to its fate.

Early Thursday, two loud pops signaled an explosive combustion in one of the trucks, and a black plume of smoke spread from the plant, sending 15 police officers and paramedics to the hospital. All eight remaining vehicles are now likely to burn, said Robert W. Royall Jr., assistant chief of emergency operations for the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office.

We are “watching physics at work,” Arkema spokesman Jeff Carr said Thursday. “Probably a couple more tonight.”

Explosion evacuee Martha Higdon and her son Truman, left, speaks outside of the First Baptist Church, which has been set up as a shelter for residents evacuated from their homes following an explosion at the Arkema Chemical Plant in Crosby, Texas. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Richard Rennard, president of acrylic monomers, America for Arkema Inc. speaks during a news conference Thursday, Aug. 31, 2017, in Crosby, Texas. (Gregory Bull/AP)