Tag: North Korea

If the US was to do a preemptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear program I seriously doubt the North Koreans would respond by launching an artillery strike that would flatten Seoul:

North Korea has a massive amount of artillery dug into bunkers and pointed toward Seoul, and missiles that can reach Japan and other key U.S. allies in the region.

A pre-emptive U.S. strike might slow North Korea’s advancing nuclear program, but there is no effective way of knocking out its ability to retaliate.

“A military strike might alleviate our concerns” about North Korea developing nuclear missiles capable of reaching U.S. cities, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. “But it would mean Seoul could get flattened.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have only sketchy knowledge of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, which includes ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. They are scattered around in hardened bunkers. Specialized bombs capable of penetrating bunkers would be required to destroy them.

Some of the missiles are mounted on trucks and can be hidden. “All they would have to do is successfully hide the no-dong missiles,” Albright said. “They have hundreds of them.” The missiles have a range of about 800 to 900 miles.  [USA Today]

You can read the rest at the link, but if North Korea flattened Seoul this would lead to a regime change invasion of North Korea by the ROK and the US.  Kim Jong-un is not suicidal and I believe would instead respond in a limited way that would not lead to a regime change scenario.  I think the Kim regime would focus on conducting an asymmetrical retaliation focused against the United States that would include cyber attacks and possibly launching a limited number of ballistic missiles at US targets.

Does anyone have any opinions on how they think the Kim regime would respond to a preemptive strike on their nuclear and missile programs?

Did media really think President Trump would confirm or deny if the military launched an electronic warfare attack against North Korea?:

President Trump is refusing to say whether the U.S. sabotaged North Korea’s launch of ballistic missile that blew up shortly after liftoff Sunday morning.

“I don’t want to comment on it,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt at Monday’s White House Easter Egg Roll.

Last month, the New York Times reported that during President Barack Obama’s last three years in office, he quietly ordered a surge in strikes against the missile launches — including the use of “electronic warfare” techniques to combat them. It’s unclear whether such a counterattack was used to sabotage Sunday’s launch.

“The approach taken in targeting the North Korean missiles has distinct echoes of the American- and Israeli-led sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program, the most sophisticated known use of a cyberweapon meant to cripple a nuclear threat,” the Times’ David Sanger and William Broad wrote in early March.

During his “Fox & Friends” interview, Trump would also not comment on what the U.S. response would be if North Korea attempted to launch another missile.

“We’ll find out,” the president said.  [Yahoo News]

Military images at an orphanage in #Pyongyang #DPRK pic.twitter.com/olUa7jfVRW

— Jeremy Koh (@JeremyKohCNA) April 13, 2017

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

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.

No one does a military parade quite like the North Koreans:

North Korea’s latest military hardware, including what analysts said appeared to be three kinds of intercontinental ballistic missiles, rolled through the North’s capital on Saturday, as the country showed off its military might amid heightened tensions with the United States.

As the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, watched from a platform, long columns of goose-stepping soldiers, accompanied by a fleet of tanks, missiles and rocket tubes, marched through a large plaza in the capital, Pyongyang, that was named after Mr. Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-sung, the country’s founding president.

Saturday was the 105th anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth and the North’s most important holiday, called the Day of the Sun. The United States, China and other regional powers had feared that North Korea might mark the occasion by conducting its sixth nuclear test or by launching an intercontinental ballistic missile. The United States sent a naval strike group to the area in a show of force.

But no seismic tremor emanated on Saturday morning from the North’s nuclear test site, where recent satellite photographs have shown what appeared to be preparations for an underground detonation.

South Korean analysts said Mr. Kim seemed to have decided to celebrate his grandfather’s birthday not with a nuclear test or a missile launching, but with a military parade meant to demonstrate his missile capabilities to his American foes.

To military analysts scrutinizing North Korea’s broadcast of the parade, the most noteworthy element seemed to be three types of long-range ballistic missiles, one of them apparently new.  [New York Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but remember that these new ICBMs have not been tested and could be mock ups for all we know.  The signaling that the Kim regime appears to be doing is to show the US that they are developing solid fuel ICBMs.  Missiles with solid fuel means they can be fired quicker due to not needing to be fueled.  They did recently successfully test fire the Pukguksong-2 intermediate range missile which uses solid fuel which shows they are developing the capability.

Most significant was that the Kim regime did not conduct a nuclear test yet.  It will be interesting to see if in the coming days if they will attempt to conduct one.  If not this is an indication that the US show of force worked to stop their planned nuclear test.

For further reading I recommend going over to CNN where they have some good video of the missiles North Korea had on display.  The Diplomat as well has a good analysis of the parade that is worth reading.

There is a reason that Northeast Asia has been stable since the end of the Korean War after decades of conflict and that is the US military presence in the region.  Doug Bandow from the libertarian Cato Institute disagrees:

But that world disappeared long ago. The Korean Peninsula has lost its geopolitical significance, South Korea its helplessness, and America’s Korea commitment its purpose. While there is much to criticize in the approach of Donald Trump’s administration to the rest of the world, the president correctly sees the need for a foreign policy that more effectively protects America’s interests. A good place to start shifting course is the region home to the world’s newest and least responsible nuclear power.

The Koreas are no longer a proxy battleground between superpowers. There was a time when U.S. withdrawal from a confrontation with a Soviet ally in Asia would have, analysts believed, signaled weakness a continent away in Europe. But the Soviets are long gone and the cause for American commitment with them. An inter-Korean war would be tragic and the body count enormous, but absent American involvement the fighting would largely be confined to the peninsula. The continued presence of U.S. forces, by contrast, virtually guarantees the spread of conflict.

South Korea’s defense no longer requires Washington’s presence. The South’s economy began racing past its northern antagonist during the 1960s. Democracy arrived in the late 1980s. By the 1990s, when mass starvation stalked Pyongyang as Seoul’s economy boomed, the gap between the two Koreas was already huge and growing. The South’s military potential is correspondingly great though as yet unrealized — in part because dependence on the U.S. presence has affected strategic choices.  [Foreign Policy]

You can read the rest at the link as well as read my prior analysis of why USFK withdrawal will not happen any time soon at this link.

I find it hard to believe that this many people were evacuated from Pyongyang without the embassy personnel and few western journalists in North Korea noticing:

A Russian news outlet says the North Korean regime has decided to evacuate a large number of citizens out of capital Pyongyang due to fears of a war with the U.S.

According to the Pravda Report on Wednesday, some 600-thousand people, which is a quarter of Pyongyang’s total population, are subject to immediately leave the capital city. The order was given by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The report said this is because there are not enough bomb shelters in Pyongyang to accommodate the whole population. It noted the 600-thousand people are mostly individuals with criminal records and they will have to leave Pyongyang to let others use the bomb shelters.

The report cited experts as viewing the evacuation as most likely stemming from extremely strained tensions in relations with the United States.  [KBS World Radio]