There were no signs yet suggesting an imminent North Korean missile launch toward South Korea, a senior U.S. military official said Monday.

“Let’s assume that a missile does come to the ROK (Republic of Korea), what other things we expect to see in the DPRK (North Korea) to back that up?” the official told reporters, declining to be named.

“We’re seeing nothing in the DPRK that suggests that anything is going to threaten the ROK. If anything, the missiles may be shot into the waters, like it was done like back in 2009. We’re seeing nothing to back up any kind of hostile actions that the DPRK used to take.”

Further ratcheting up tension here, Pyongyang had been seen preparing for missile launches from its east coast. Experts said it would launch them after April 15, the birthday of its national founder Kim Il-sung.

The U.S. official stressed the North appears to be trying to figure out a way out from the heightened state of rhetoric given its bellicose statements have been conditional.

“While that rhetoric has been heightened much more than we have seen in recent history, it has always been conditional. So if the U.S. does this, then we are going to do this. So there was always a backdoor to it,” he told reporters, declining to be named.

“What I would hope is that they are exploring the use of that backdoor to scale back their rhetoric.”

If the increasingly hostile rhetoric targeted outside forces such as the U.S. and South Korea, there appeared to be “nothing” to back up their rhetoric, the official added.

“We are not seeing any large-scale troop movements, we are not seeing large-scale exercises. If the audience is the citizens of the DPRK, then obviously I think (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-un is trying to show he is a strong leader standing up to the U.S.,” he said.

Listing a range of possible provocations by the North, the official said the combined forces were closely monitoring North Korean movements.

“The launch of intermediate range missile is one of many tactical levels of provocations we’ve been exploring and trying to figure out what the true intentions are. The test of that missile, possibly another nuclear test, and possibly a missile engine testing in different facilities are just some of the examples we have been looking at,” he said.

“Any those things can happen with little to no notice and we may not know that it happens until the missiles are launched. Any of us truly know what the true intentions of Kim’s regime are. Any tactical provocations this sort of may be a way to heighten rhetoric.”

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)