Yes We Have Nukes, No We Don’t Have Nukes
The geo-political nuclear soap opera that only a diplomatic beurocrat could enjoy has a new twist. The Joong Ang is reporting
A transcript obtained by the JoongAng Ilbo of a Monday broadcast by a state-run North Korean radio station appears to contradict Pyeongyang’s claim last week that the regime has nuclear weapons. But its meaning was not entirely clear, and experts were divided over what significance it had, if any.
The newspaper obtained a transcript of a Monday broadcast by a state-run radio station which, on Feb. 10, had broadcast the regime’s announcement that it had nuclear weapons. The Monday transcript included this statement: “The United States, which has been intoxicated with victories in invasion wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has designated our republic, which it called part of an axis of evil, as the next target to attack, while circulating theories of nuclear and missile threats that we are not in possession of.”
Asked to comment on this statement ? which, though somewhat ambiguous in the original Korean, seems to assert that the regime is “not in possession” of “nuclear and missile threats” ? some observers suggested that the apparent discrepancy may suggest conflict within the North’s power elite. But intelligence officers point out that there have been no other signs of such a conflict in recent days.
Jun Bong-geun, director of the private Institute for Peace and Cooperation, called the apparent discrepancy hard to understand, given the North Korean regime’s absolute control over the media. “It could be that there was a miscommunication between the foreign ministry and the state media,” said Mr. Jun.
Chung Young-tae, a researcher with South Korea’s state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, said, “The discrepancy in the North Korean media demonstrates that our government should not read too much into the nuclear weapons possession statement itself, but [pay attention to] the underlying diplomatic strategy.”
The North is probably just trying to rally their people by saying that the US is trying pick on them for having WMD even though they don’t. I wouldn’t read to much into it. You can’t believe to much of anything the Norks say, so who knows if they actually have nuclear weapons or not.
