Category: North Korea

It seems the drums of a preemptive strike on North Korea are growing louder.  Here is the latest expert to weigh in:

The United States should be prepared to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea, including a nuclear attack if necessary, before the communist nation uses its nuclear bombs that could “kill 90 percent of Americans,” a former CIA chief said Wednesday.

James Woolsey, who served as CIA director from 1993-95, made the case in an op-ed piece in the Hill newspaper, arguing that the U.S. is erroneously underestimating Pyongyang’s capabilities to deliver nuclear weapons by missile, freighter and even satellite.

“Why do the press and public officials ignore or under-report these facts? Perhaps no administration wants to acknowledge that North Korea is an existential threat on their watch,” Woolsey said in the article, titled “How North Korea could kill 90 percent of Americans.”

“Whatever the motives for obfuscating the North Korean nuclear threat, the need to protect the American people is immediate and urgent. The U.S. must be prepared to preempt North Korea by any means necessary, including nuclear weapons,” he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

If this was just about anyone else people would be claiming Senator McCain is fat shaming.  I guess obese Asian dictators with bad haircuts are not eligible for special victim status:

“What, did they want me to call him a crazy skinny kid?” Sen. John McCain quipped via Twitter on Wednesday in response to a report by the Korean Central News Agencythat the dignity of North Korea’s supreme leadership was hurt by McCain’s recent description of Kim Jong Un as the “crazy fat kid that’s running North Korea.”  [Yahoo]

You can read more at the link, but I think Senator McCain is making a mistake by calling Kim Jong-un crazy.  What he has been doing is actually quite rationale from his perspective.

North Korea is super unhappy about American support for defectors. So unhappy they came up with this exceptional paragraph. pic.twitter.com/zE8A1tcV22

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) March 28, 2017

Don’t tell me to talk to North Korea if you aren’t listening to North Korea. https://t.co/cKnwsRIj9o pic.twitter.com/nxXzoljv0R

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) March 28, 2017

What Christopher Hill is advocating for has been tried before and does not work.  Increasing defenses in South Korea is common sense and has long been going on, working with China has also been tried and it has not stopped the North Korean nuclear or missile threats:

No good military options exist on North Korea and the best way to deal with the provocative regime is to increase cooperation with China, former U.S. nuclear negotiator with North Korea Christopher Hill said Sunday.

Talk of pre-emptive strikes against the North have gained traction after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said earlier this month that diplomacy failed to disarm the North and the United States is considering a new range of options, including military ones.

“We say ‘everything is on the table’ is because basically none of the options are particularly good options,” the former negotiator said on New York’s AM 970 radio, according to the newspaper Hill. “There are no good military options.

“We’ve done a lot on sanctions. It’s the most sanctioned country in the world. That hasn’t worked. We tried to have negotiations with them. That hasn’t worked. But I think what could work is a much better understanding between the U.S. and China,” Hill said.

He expressed concerns about the rapidly worsening threats from the North.

“In the last few years, North Korea’s threat has really grown … now we are seeing them modernize their missile arsenal, such that it’s quite likely in the near future … North Korea will have a deliverable nuclear weapon. And then the question is, what are we all going to do about that?” Hill said.

“I wouldn’t want to be Donald Trump in 2020 and have to say … we couldn’t do anything,” he said.  [Yonhap]

It seems to me that Mr. Hill should not be calling out President Trump when he could not stop the North Korean threat when he was in government.

If the North Koreans conduct this nuclear test it seems they must be pretty confident that no matter what they do before the upcoming ROK presidential election that a Korean left wing candidate is going to win. Typically North Korean provocations cause voters to rally behind a Korean right wing candidate, but this may be an indication of how discredited the Korean right is after the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye:

Another North Korean nuclear test is imminent, with preparations likely to wrap up this week, intelligence authorities in Seoul said Wednesday.

The test, North Korea’s sixth, could be conducted as early as next week

“We have intelligence that North Korea may conduct its sixth nuclear test in the first week of April and are in the process of confirming this,” said a South Korean military intelligence source who requested anonymity. “We have determined that North Korea is expected to finish all preparations for a nuclear test by March 31.”

There were expectations that the North could conduct a nuclear test ahead of the upcoming meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump expected to be held on April 6 and 7 at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

“We are analyzing that there is a high possibility that North Korea will conduct a nuclear test ahead of U.S. President Trump and Chinese President Xi’s summit in the United States,” another intelligence official said.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Construction progress at Tumen city’s new bridge appears stalled: imagery https://t.co/9ytkxl56Yl pic.twitter.com/3aIEt8C6Nr

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) March 26, 2017

Kim Jong Nam's body taken to a crematorium & given 'religious rite.' It will prolly be cremated & ashes disposed of https://t.co/GQfl6PqDpt

— Noon in Korea (@NoonInKorea) March 26, 2017

pic.twitter.com/cApzrIY0ld

— Yeonmi, Park. ( 박연미) (@YeonmiParkNK) March 23, 2017

It looks like the North Koreans blew themselves up again:

US officials confirmed North Korea had attempted to launch a missile near Kalma, on the country’s east coast, but early reports suggest it failed.

“South Korea and the US are aware of the missile launch and to their knowledge North Korea’s missile was not successfully launched,” South Korea’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

Neither the US nor South Korea have released information on what type of missile was fired, or why it failed. The US Pacific Command said it was working with partners to assess it further.  [CNN]