Tag: North Korea

I knew I had seen that bomb somewhere before! pic.twitter.com/uxmUmXPUON

— Bruce Klingner (@BruceKlingner) September 12, 2016

This photo, released by North Korea’s state-run Internet propaganda site Meari on Sept. 19, 2016, shows a poster bearing an image of a mother holding a baby with the phrase “For the future, let’s stop smoking flat.” (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

It is pretty obvious that sanctions are not stopping the Kim regime’s nuclear and missile programs and it is because of China’s refusal to strictly enforce them:

While the U.S. government says sanctions work, a recent analysis by John Park of Harvard University and Jim Walsh of MIT concluded that sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council “have not worked, and that in some ways, the sanctions have had the net effect of actually improving (North Korean) procurement capabilities.”

One effect of sanctions is that North Korean trade with nations other than China has come to a virtual halt. But China allows numerous state-run companies from North Korea to operate on its soil and those have learned to adapt, Park and Walsh wrote in their study, “Stopping North Korea, Inc.: Sanctions Effectiveness and Unintended Consequences.”

The North Korean managers in charge of these companies have hired better Chinese middlemen, moved to China to improve their effectiveness and expanded their nuclear procurement operations in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and North Korean embassies around the world, the study found.

Some analysts, such as Gordon Chang, author of Nuclear Showdown; North Korea Takes on the World, urge the U.S. to impose sanctions on Chinese companies that aid North Korea’s nuclear program.  [USA Today]

You can read more at the link, but I agree with Gordon Chang that sanctioning Chinese companies may be an incentive to get the Chinese to clamp down on the North Korean nuclear program.

Utter silliness. ANYONE who believes NK would negotiate away its nukes needs his brain checked for radioactivity. https://t.co/UbMbGsDmxT

— the oranckay (@oranckay) September 9, 2016

An official points to North Korea’s northeastern county of Kilju, where the communist country conducted a nuclear test, at the Korea Meteorological Agency in Seoul on Sept. 9, 2016. The test, the fifth of its kind following its first in 2006, second in 2009, third in 2013 and fourth in January 2016, caused a 5 magnitude tremor. North Korean news media, including the Korean Central TV Station, confirmed the latest nuclear test in their reports later in the day. (Yonhap)

I would be surprised to see this happen:

The Defense Ministry said it was implementing a three-pillared system against North Korean weapons threats. On top of the already known Kill Chain to preemptively destroy North Korea missiles and the Korean Air Missile Defense system for air strikes, the ministry will add the so-called Korean Massive Punishment and Retaliation program, which would authorize joint allied forces to attack the North Korean military command if the country causes nuclear damage. The military plans to back the program with precision missiles and specially trained forces. Korean and U.S. forces are also developing new type of preemptive-strike operations.

Seoul should persuade Washington to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula until the North Korean nuclear threat is removed. NATO allows jet fighters of members to mount tactical nuclear weapons. The South Korean president as well as the U.S. president need to have the power to authorize the use of such weapons.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

I would think a lot more than targeting regime leadership and key sites would happen to North Korea if they used a nuclear weapon against the South:

South Korea vowed on Friday to counterattack North Korea’s leadership including ruler Kim Jong-un if Pyongyang uses its nuclear weapon.

“If the North harms us with nuclear arms we will directly target, punish and retaliate against the North Korean leadership, including its war command,” said Lieutenant General Lim Ho-young, strategy and planning director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We will operate our strike capabilities, including missiles that are capable of making precise strikes en masse simultaneously and will deploy our elite special operations forces.”

The retaliation will target the North’s command and control system, he said, as well as missile facilities and submarine bases using the South’s capabilities. He said the South has missile capabilities comparable to cruise and ballistic missiles of the North, while its air-to-ground guided bombs and missiles are superior to those of the North.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but if the North launched a nuke at Seoul you would think the US would respond in kind against South Korea.

An official checks radiation levels at a checking facility of the state-run Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety in Gangneung on South Korea’s east coast on Sept. 9, 2016, to see if the area has been contaminated by radioactive material. Earlier in the day, North Korea confirmed its fifth nuclear test, which Seoul blasted as an “intolerable provocation.” (Yonhap)

The Chinese will probably talk that they will do something in response to this nuclear test, but I doubt anything of real consequence will happen to North Korea.  At this point the only way I see China doing anything to stop the North Korean nuclear program is if South Korea and Japan get the green light to begin developing their own nukes:

North Korea confirmed its fifth nuclear test explosion early Friday, its largest yet. The provocation brought instant condemnation from the country’s neighbors and a call from President Obama for “serious consequences.”

Pyongyang also said it has made strides that could bring it closer to mounting a warhead on one of its ballistic missiles and launching a long-distance nuclear strike.

“We successfully conducted a nuclear explosion test to determine the power of [the] nuclear warhead,” a female anchor announced on North Korea’s state television. “We will continue to strengthen our nuclear capabilities to protect our sovereignty. We have now standardized and minimized nuclear warheads … We can now produce small nuclear warheads any time we desire.”

South Korea’s defense ministry said the yield of the blast is estimated to be 10 kilotons, the largest ever conducted by Pyongyang. Its first nuclear test in 2006 yielded less than one kiloton, and the country has been steadily increasing its atomic capacity ever since.  [Good Morning America]

You can read more at the link.

The most obvious question in regards to this idea is what will the bribe amount be to secure a summit?  Kim Jong-un is not going to show up to an Inter-Korean summit without a bribe.  Secondly what will they talk about?  How Kim Jong-un’s grandpa was responsible for the killing of President Park’s mother?  North Korea is not going to give up their nuclear or missile programs so it is a waste of time to talk about that.  From their perspective why would they give them up?:

Rep. Park Jie-won, the interim leader of the country’s second-largest opposition party, called on President Park Geun-hye, Wednesday, to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to break the deadlock in inter-Korean relations.

He also asked President Park to push for a constitutional revision during the remainder of her term that ends in February 2018.

“The most important things that Park should do during her remaining year-and-a-half in office are to push for an inter-Korean summit and a constitutional revision at the earliest possible date,” Park of the People’s Party said in a speech at the National Assembly.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but Rep. Park may also be calling for reforming the Presidential system to change it to two four year terms like we have in the US.  It seems to me the five year term has been working well for South Korea so why the need to change it?