The mass refugee issue is why I believe if the regime was to collapse the DMZ should remain in place to stop a mass population movement to the South. It would be up to the ROK to quickly move and distribute aid to the North which would help mitigate a mass population movement:
U.S. experts have urged South Korea and the U.S. to jointly devise measures to improve assimilation of North Korean defectors to other countries in the event of a North Korean collapse.
Olivia Enos and Bruce Klingner, researchers at the conservative U.S. think tank the Heritage Foundation, released a report titled “Next Steps for Human Rights in North Korea” on Tuesday.
The report said the U.S. must adopt a multi-pronged strategy that acknowledges the two important stakeholders in the human rights debate: people inside North Korea and defectors outside the country.
It said the U.S. and South Korea should strive to remedy problems before a potential Kim Jong-un regime collapse and the humanitarian crisis that would follow.
The researchers said that if the North were to collapse, as many as three-point-65 million North Koreans could look to resettle in South Korea.
They said that such a large-scale humanitarian crisis would threaten the stability of South Korea, unless a comprehensive assimilation plan was created well in advance. [KBS World Radio]
Global Voices has an interesting article posted that shows a variety of reactions from Chinese Internet users in regards to North Korea’s recent nuclear test. It seems at least some people in China are beginning to realize what a danger North Korea is to not only the ROK, US and Japan, but China now as well:
China and North Korea border. Photo from VOA Chinese.
Instead of condemning the nuclear test, Beijing took a more moderate stance, saying it “firmly opposes” the test and urged North Korea to “remain committed to its denuclearisation commitment”.
On the other hand, Chinese netizens grew more and more impatient with the government’s tolerance of their “insane” neighbor. It wasn’t only polarizing US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump who said China is the one who should deal with North Korea. On Chinese Twitter-like Weibo, many voiced their criticism of the government’s diplomatic policy in a news thread discussing North Korea’s H-bomb test.
Below are a selection of popular comments that have received more than 1,000 likes: [Global Voices]
You can read the various reactions at the link.
Also of interest is that One Free Korea in a great opinion piece that I highly recommend everyone read included a link to a Yonhap article that shows that even the Chinese state controlled media is confirming increasing public frustration with North Korea:
In China’s strict-controlled online media, public resentment against North Korea’s fourth nuclear test is growing with some social media users criticizing their government for not taking a tougher response to the North’s test.
Since North Korea announced that it had successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test last Wednesday, a newspaper published by the Chinese Communist Party has conducted five rounds of online opinion polls about the North’s test.
In one opinion poll of some 42,500 people by the state-run Global Times, 81 percent say the North’s nuclear test poses a threat to China’s security.
In another poll of 4,900 people by the same paper, 82 percent responded that they support new sanctions by the U.N. Security Council against North Korea. [Yonhap]
Via a reader tip comes news that North Korea flew a drone across the DMZ that the ROK military took shots at:
South Korea on Wednesday fired 20 machine gun warning shots after a North Korean drone briefly crossed the rivals’ border, officials said, the first shots fired in a Cold War-style standoff between the Koreas in the wake of the North’s nuclear test last week.
The North Korean drone was flying dozens of meters (yards) south of the border and turned back to the North after the South fired the shots, South Korean defense and military officials said, requesting anonymity because of office rules. The shots did not hit the drone.
North Korean drone flights across the world’s most heavily armed border are rare, but have happened before.
North Korea has in recent years touted its drone program, a relatively new addition to its arsenal. In 2013, state media said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had watched a drone attack drill on a simulated South Korean target. [Associated Press]
More threats from North Korea being made against the US:
North Korea said Tuesday that it is ready to detonate hydrogen bombs capable of wiping out the United States “all at once,” claiming that it has succeeded in developing miniaturized nuclear weapons.
North Korea’s latest nuclear test helped the North “get fully armed with smaller and standardized H-bombs for ballistic rockets and get possessed of ultra-modern strike means for delivering nuclear bombs of various kinds,” the Korean Central News Agency said in its commentary.
The North threatened that its nuclear scientists and technicians are “in high spirits” to detonate hydrogen bombs capable of “wiping out” the whole U.S. territory all at once as Washington moves to stifle the North. [Yonhap]
It is important to remember that just because the test failed doesn’t mean the North Koreans did not learn something from it to improve the bomb for a second test:
The yield, or the total energy produced by the bomb, also contradicts Pyongyang’s claim.
It is estimated that the Wednesday test generated 6 kilotons of yield, which is less than the 8-kiloton yield of the third nuclear test in 2013.
The North’s second nuclear test in 2009 had 2-kiloton yield, and the first in 2006 yielded less than 1 kiloton of total energy. A yield of 1 kiloton can be approximately compared to 1,000 tons of TNT exploding.
In an H-bomb test by the Soviet Union in 1961, the yield produced by the destructive bomb known as “Czar Bomb” was estimated at 50,000 kilotons.
One government official involved in the assessment of the test last week told the JoongAng Ilbo that the government thinks Pyongyang carried out a failed hydrogen test after reviewing various scientific data and evidence. “We have reviewed a wide range of scientific data such as the strength of the seismic event and sound wave and the detonation location before coming up with the assessment [that it was a failed H-bomb test],” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
If he some how gets elected it will be interesting to see if Trump is able to back up his big talk because getting China to do something on North Korea is not as easy as he makes it sound:
Calling North Korea a “disgrace,” Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Sunday that China should solve the problem as Pyongyang’s main benefactor or be forced to see its trade with the United States suffer.
It was the latest in a series of remarks that Trump has been making since the North’s nuclear test last week to underscore his point that China has “total control” over Pyongyang, and the U.S. should force Beijing to fix the problem of the North.
“I think North Korea is a disgrace,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I would get China, and I would say, ‘Get in there and straighten it out. You’d better straighten it out.’ And, if you don’t straighten it out, we’re going to have trouble because we have power over China. We have trade power over China.”
Trump also said that while Iran is expected to have nuclear weapons due to what he calls a “stupid agreement” that the U.S. and other world powers concluded with Tehran last year, North Korea already has “very dangerous weapons of some sort.”
In another FOX TV interview, Trump again said that China is the one that should fix the North Korea problem.
“People ask me a number of questions. They were asking me how do you solve North Korea? Well, China should be solving North Korea; they have total power,” Trump said. [Yonhap]
