Conflicting reports

Compare:

Asian governments on Monday played down the significance of
North Korea's latest missile test, saying it involved a short-range weapon unable to reach as far as Japan and with no link to the communist North's nuclear program.

and:


The United States and North Korea appear to be on a collision course and June could well be the month of impact. North Korea says it plans to remove and reprocess plutonium rods to produce weapons-grade material in three months unless the US shows flexibility. The US says it is fed up and wants nuclear disarmament of the North.

North Korea's renewed nuclear threats and US comments that it would take the nuclear dispute to the United Nations Security Council will energize regional efforts for a last-ditch effort to save the moribund six-way talks. Chinese and South Korean diplomatic entreaties, however, are increasingly unlikely to achieve a fourth round of the multilateral negotiations, placing the participating nations on a path to confrontation.

Pyongyang's shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and threats to augment its nuclear arsenal will affirm regional perceptions that the US policy has failed. China and South Korea will conclude that the lack of response by the United States to the North's nuclear-weapons pronouncement in February likely led Pyongyang to calculate that it must take the additional escalatory step of shutting down the reactor in an attempt to force Washington back to the negotiating table. In this sense, the military benefits that North Korea gains from additional reprocessed plutonium is less strategically significant than the inflammatory effect it has on its neighbors to renew calls for increased US flexibility to preclude a dangerous downward spiral.

Beijing and Seoul will be privately dismissive of Washington's nebulous comments of potential North Korean nuclear-test preparations.

One of these reporting agencies originates from Washington, although the author has a South Korean name, the other from a Chinese government-controlled news service in Hong Kong, although the author has an English name.

Which do you think better represents what Asian governments think?