US Vice President Mike Pence says the era of strategic patience is over.  So I wonder what they are going to call their new North Korea policy then, the “All Options on the Table” policy?:

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Monday warned North Korea against testing America’s mettle with its saber-rattling, saying Washington will defeat any use of military force with an “overwhelming and effective” response.

During a press conference with South Korea’s Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, Pence also reassured South Korea that Washington’s security commitment to its Asian ally is “ironclad and immutable.”

“North Korea will do well not to test his (Trump’s) resolve or strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region,” Pence said, noting the U.S. president’s recent decision on military action in Syria and Afghanistan.

“We hope to achieve this objective (Pyongyang’s denuclearization) through peaceful means, but all options are on the table,” he added.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

The information war being fought inside North Korea by activists continues:

A group of North Korean defectors in South Korea on Saturday sent hundreds of thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets via helium balloons across the inter-Korean border in time for the 105th birth anniversary of the North’s late founder Kim Il Sung.

The Fighters for Free North Korea said its members sent some 300,000 leaflets from a mountain in Gimpo, just west of Seoul, starting at 5 a.m., condemning the North Korean regime and its role in the assassination of leader Kim Jong-un’s elder half brother, Kim Jong-nam, in February in Malaysia.

Besides the leaflets, the 10 gas-filled balloons also contained 2,000 one-dollar bills, 1,000 USB storage devices, 1,000 DVDs and 500 booklets, the group said.

Large placards attached to the balloons featured photos of Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-nam, which were titled “murderer” and “dead person,” respectively.

The group said the leaflets contained all the details of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam which occurred at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Feb. 13, as well as criticism of the Pyongyang regime.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak is the North Korean defector turned leader of the Fighters For A Free North Korea who the Kim regime has repeatedly threatened, sent their South Korean leftist lackeys to assault, and even tried to assassinate him a few years ago due to his balloon launch efforts.

Foreign policy adviser travelling with VP Pence said that if it had been a nuclear test, “other actions would have been taken by the US”.

— Bonnie Glaser / 葛来仪 (@BonnieGlaser) April 16, 2017

Pedestrians look at workers on top of a billboard in central Seoul on April 14, 2017, who started a hunger strike there to demand the abolition of layoffs and temps, and the guarantee of primary labor rights. (Yonhap)

Could you imagine what would happen to South Korea if their nuclear reactors were struck by North Korean ballistic missiles causing multiple Fukushima like disasters across the country?:

South Korea’s nuclear power reactors have not been designed to deal with military attacks, a report submitted to a lawmaker by the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) showed Sunday.

The evaluation sent to Rep. Kim Jong-hoon of the conservative Liberty Korea Party revealed that the outer protective wall of local reactors were never meant to withstand a missile strike or other forms of concerted attacks.

The reinforced concrete walls are the last barrier built around reactors that can contain radioactive materials from being leaked into the surrounding area in the event of a serious accident.

“They have been designed from the outset only to remain standing in the face of typhoons, earthquakes and other forms of natural disasters,” the lawmaker said. He pointed out that the casing can deflect the blast of explosions and debris from the inside, although not from external strikes or even the kind of terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but this just goes to show the importance of missile defense which certain people in South Korea actually want to handicap and leave critical infrastructure like this with less protection.

I would say probably the most significant thing about this failed launch is that the North Koreans do not believe President Trump will bomb them.  If they did, they would not have blatantly against UN resolutions have launched this missile right after President Trump put them on notice:

North Korea on Sunday attempted to launch an unidentified ballistic missile from its east coast, but it exploded right after lift-off, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

Pyongyang fired off the missile from a land-based launch facility in Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province, at around 6:20 a.m., the JCS said, noting that it needed further analysis to determine the exact type of the missile and other details.

The botched missile launch came before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence arrives in Seoul in the afternoon to highlight the robust alliance against the wayward regime’s escalating saber-rattling.

“The North attempted to launch a missile, but we presume that the launch ended in failure,” a JCS official said, declining to be named.

On April 5, Pyongyang fired off what was thought to be a KN-15 medium-range ballistic missile from the Sinpo area. It flew just 60 kilometers before falling into the East Sea.

Seoul officials said the missile launched Sunday could be the same type as the one fired earlier this month.

Some experts here say the failed launch might indicate the North has difficulty in developing solid-fuel engines for a new missile or the Scud-ER missile. Others say the launch could be part of its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development program.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link, but just because the missile failed does not mean the test was a total failure.  There may be important lessons learned from the failed test if they were able to collect the data to improve the design for future tests.  If they perfect their solid fuel missile design this would be a game changer for them since they could more quickly deploy and fire these missiles before US intelligence collection assets could detect them compared to their current missiles that require fueling and more time to prepare them for launch.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

In survey, majority of Korean content companies report losses from #China's THAAD backlash: https://t.co/CzmWnRLBCN #kpop #hallyu #한류 pic.twitter.com/qtkXDlXOAN

— KEI (@KoreaEconInst) April 13, 2017

A foreign woman married to a South Korean man casts a ballot at a multicultural center in Seoul on April 14, 2017, as part of a hands-on program in the runup to the May 9 presidential election. (Yonhap)

The Vice Chairman of the Seoul Financial Forum has come out against the deployment of THAAD to Korea:

James Rooney, vice chairman of the Seoul Financial Forum, said that South Korea will suffer unwanted consequences for its deployment of a U.S. missile defense system, describing the move as a “self-inflicted” mistake.

He said that South Korea needs to keep the U.S. engaged but not at the expense of antagonizing China through inappropriate access to the latter for either Washington or Japan through a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

“Bringing THAAD onto the Korean Peninsula is the most thoughtless thing that South Korea has done in a long time,” Rooney told The Korea Times.

He said that THAAD is next to the worst solution to solve the North Korea nuclear issue. He believes that it will further sour relations among neighbors and escalate geopolitical tension in the region

“THAAD is an unnecessary and distracting sideshow from much bigger and urgent issues that need to be addressed today, both within Korea and in the neighborhood,” he said.

“But it will not go away by ignoring it, and China’s issues with it will not change just because we want to argue the case differently,” he added. “We need to respect their opinion and take actions accordingly.”

Using the example of a spy cam, Rooney, a professor of international finance at Sogang University, explained why China is so sensitive to the missile defense system.

“Imagine your next door neighbor installed a spy cam system that enabled him to look over into your garden and could even tell what was going on inside your house,” he said.

His argument was that he installed it to watch out for thieves and villains coming from the other direction and has nothing to do with the neighbor.

“You cannot imagine why your neighbor would want to give this party access to information about themselves like this, but you certainly do not want any third parties to have greater abilities to monitor you and potentially threaten you with defensive weapons,” he said.

It is claimed that THAAD is purely defensive, but he said that there is no good reason to believe that the claims made for its defensive capabilities will play out to prevent loss of human life in the future.

“Many may not realize that it actually adds to the potential for death and destruction in the neighborhood because once it is installed there will be a temptation for the targeted adversary to test it to see what happens,” he added. “That temptation is not present if THAAD is not present.”  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

Mr. Rooney’s spy camera claims are only valid if you assume that the US currently has no sensors to track Chinese ballistic missile launches.  Does anyone really think the US has no sensors right now to track Chinese missile launches?  Does Mr. Rooney know that two identical AN/TPY-2 radars, identical to the one THAAD uses is located just across the water from Korea in Japan.  Why didn’t China complain about the installation of those radars.  Plus if THAAD in Korea is going to be used to spy on Chinese ballistic missile launches, it is pointed in the wrong direction of where China’s ballistic missile test range is located at.

The THAAD radar is not a 360 radar, like other missile defense systems such as Patriot, it is a directional radar pointed towards the enemy ballistic missile threat.  To look towards western China the radar would have to be completely turned away from North Korea making it useless to defend against ballistic missiles fired from North Korea.  Plus if the radar is turned towards western China satellite surveillance from China would easily detect this and would validate their current claims.  The US military is not stupid and knows they can’t point the radar towards China with no one noticing.

Then Mr. Rooney’s claim that North Korea would actually launch something at THAAD “to see what happens” is very unlikely.  Launching a ballistic missile into South Korea could be interpreted as an act of war and met with a heavy response.  Plus all across South Korea the US and the ROK military already have Patriot missile batteries deployed at key locations.  The North Koreans have never launched a ballistic missile into South Korea “to see what happens” with those systems.  THAAD like Patriot is missile defense system, just with greater range to shoot down more capable threats the North Koreans have developed that the Patriot system has less capability to shoot down.

The reason why China is opposed to THAAD is the simplest answer which is they are attempting to create a wedge in the US-ROK alliance.  I think it will ultimately fail considering how even the left wing ROK politicians favored to win the ROK presidency have now come out to support the THAAD deployment.