North Korea (Superthread)

[Edward Campbell]

Strange as it may seem there are some principles in policy and, broadly – including the Viet Nam “intervention” – the Chinese have hewed pretty firmly to one of them: non interference in the internal affairs of others.

This is one of the founding principles of Red Chinese policy – for obvious reasons. And it remains a primary principle today.

It is one of the few policy principles about which the Chinese leadership talks to its domestic audience and, in my opinion, it enjoys broad public support. When, not too long ago, in China, I had the opportunity to discuss the rather sad situation in Sudan and mentioned that China probably had more influence there than did the USA or UK or, especially, Canada, my Chinese acquaintances told me that while they, too, were distressed by the violence and poverty they felt that it was an internal matter for the Sudanese to settle for themselves and they (the Chinese) ought not to interfere.

While there are good reasons for the Chinese to worry - North Korea threatens some of China’s most important investors - there are also good reasons for China to sit on its hands: North Korea discomfits the USA and its allies, but not even the North Koreans are stupid enough to threaten China.

I think we can, and should, understand why Iran and North Korea want nuclear weapons. Look at the “respect” with which India, Israel and Pakistan are treated. Who would not want to be in the “club?” The Chinese are not, I think averse to an even larger nuclear club.

I have little doubt that very, very senior Chinese officials have warned the North Koreans away from any attacks on anybody. But I can see no reason why China should want to violate a well known and poplar “principle” and interfere, directly, in the business of the sovereign nation of the Democratic People’s Republic Korea (DPRK). I also guess that even more senior Chinese officials have warned America and South Korea away from any precipitous action against the DPRK.

My quesstimate: China cares more for South Korea than for North Korea – and the North Koreans know it. China cares more for Japan than for North Korea and the North Koreans know that, too. China is neither threatened nor hurt by the very real problems the DPRK causes for Japan, South Korea and, above all, the USA. There is, therefore, no good policy reason for China to interfere, formally, in the ongoing mess.

 

[CougarKing]

Strange as it may seem there are some principles in policy and, broadly – including the Viet Nam “intervention” – the Chinese have hewed pretty firmly to one of them: non interference in the internal affairs of others.

This is one of the founding principles of Red Chinese policy – for obvious reasons. And it remains a primary principle today.

It is one of the few policy principles about which the Chinese leadership talks to its domestic audience and, in my opinion, it enjoys broad public support. When, not too long ago, in China, I had the opportunity to discuss the rather sad situation in Sudan and mentioned that China probably had more influence there than did the USA or UK or, especially, Canada, my Chinese acquaintances told me that while they, too, were distressed by the violence and poverty they felt that it was an internal matter for the Sudanese to settle for themselves and they (the Chinese) ought not to interfere.

While there are good reasons for the Chinese to worry - North Korea threatens some of China’s most important investors - there are also good reasons for China to sit on its hands: North Korea discomfits the USA and its allies, but not even the North Koreans are stupid enough to threaten China.

I think we can, and should, understand why Iran and North Korea want nuclear weapons. Look at the “respect” with which India, Israel and Pakistan are treated. Who would not want to be in the “club?” The Chinese are not, I think averse to an even larger nuclear club.

I have little doubt that very, very senior Chinese officials have warned the North Koreans away from any attacks on anybody. But I can see no reason why China should want to violate a well known and poplar “principle” and interfere, directly, in the business of the sovereign nation of the Democratic People’s Republic Korea (DPRK). I also guess that even more senior Chinese officials have warned America and South Korea away from any precipitous action against the DPRK.

My quesstimate: China cares more for South Korea than for North Korea – and the North Koreans know it. China cares more for Japan than for North Korea and the North Koreans know that, too. China is neither threatened nor hurt by the very real problems the DPRK causes for Japan, South Korea and, above all, the USA. There is, therefore, no good policy reason for China to interfere, formally, in the ongoing mess.

The principle of "non-interference policy" in the domestic or sovereign affairs of other nations serves only one purpose for China: to ward off other nations from interfering from its own domestic affairs- namely sovereignty issues like Taiwan. The PRC may continually protest when the West or the US intervenes in a situation like the "Operation Allied Force" NATO air strikes on Kosovo, which they argued was a Serbian/Yugoslav domestic problem back in 1999, but that is nothing more than lip service and just more material for Xinhua or CCTV to announce to the masses for public consumption. (And of course the rhetoric became far more heated when the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit by a US missile during those same air strikes.)

One can argue, that the concern for PRC's own greater interests and regional/PRC domestic stability will override this "non-interference" policy principle if the conditions are right and China's hand is forced.

And as for the said intervention possibility, it does not necessarily have to be a ground invasion. Is the PLAAF not working on developing a precision strike capability? 

 

[lpfan55]

Either way, we should drop one on them before they drop one on us.

A little pre-emptive maneuvering? 

 

[midget-boyd91]

I just caught the tail end of something on NewsNet. Didn't catch the whole story, but it looks like the alert level along the DMZ has been raised.

Oddball

 

[Edward Campbell]

The principle of "non-interference policy" in the domestic or sovereign affairs of other nations serves only one purpose for China: to ward off other nations from interfering from its own domestic affairs- namely sovereignty issues like Taiwan. The PRC may continually protest when the West or the US intervenes in a situation like the "Operation Allied Force" NATO air strikes on Kosovo, which they argued was a Serbian/Yugoslav domestic problem back in 1999, but that is nothing more than lip service and just more material for Xinhua or CCTV to announce to the masses for public consumption. (And of course the rhetoric became far more heated when the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was hit by a US missile during those same air strikes.)

One can argue, that the concern for PRC's own greater interests and regional/PRC domestic stability will override this "non-interference" policy principle if the conditions are right and China's hand is forced.

And as for the said intervention possibility, it does not necessarily have to be a ground invasion. Is the PLAAF not working on developing a precision strike capability?

No arguments from me re: self serving policy. All policy ought to be self serving, all the time. Policy that serves the interests of others is a waste of time, effort, money and political capital.

The best "answer," for China, is Korean reunification. China wants (South) Korean investment without the bother of starving, backwards, communistic (North) Koreans. War serves no one's interests, as far as I can see.

 

[old medic]

Gates issues warning to North Korea
How Hwee Young / EPA
Secretary of Defense Gates appeared earlier today in Singapore with China's deputy Chief of General Staff Ma Xiaotian. Defense ministers and policy-makers from 27 nations gathered in Singapore for the summit on Asian defense and security.
In a speech in Singapore, the Defense chief says the U.S. will hold Pyongyang 'fully accountable' if it sells or transfers nuclear material abroad.
By Julian E. Barnes
6:32 PM PDT, May 29, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-gates30-2009may30,0,4747449.story

Reporting from Singapore -- Drawing the most explicit U.S. line yet on North Korea, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates vowed that the Obama administration would hold North Korea "fully accountable" if it sold or transferred any nuclear material outside its borders.

Gates sketched the framework of a new administration policy by saying that though a nuclear-armed North Korea is unacceptable, any step it takes to spread the technology would invite the swiftest and most forceful U.S. response.

"The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and our allies," Gates told officials gathered at an Asian defense summit here. "And we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action."

Until Gates' speech, the Obama administration's policy to the North Korean nuclear threat was unclear. However, the warning by Gates formed the basis for President Obama's approach, classifying North Korea's ambitions as a security concern for the region but, more seriously, as a proliferation worry for the United States and the rest of the world.

In the five days since North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb and then launched a series of missile tests, including one Friday, U.S. officials and their allies have reacted by denouncing the regime in general terms.

But Gates, in his address in Singapore this morning, was more specific, spelling out what action U.S. officials would find most objectionable and subject to a U.S. response.

He did not specify the potential consequences, but his language hinted at a military reaction by echoing post-Sept. 11 Bush administration warnings that those who harbor terrorists would be "held accountable." Those warnings were followed by a U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Gates' speech also may serve as a message to countries and militant groups that are potential buyers of North Korean weaponry. Past customers are believed to include Iran, Syria, Libya, the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah and others.

However, Gates' appearance at the annual security conference also had powerful diplomatic overtones. Following his address, Gates was planning to meet with South Korean and Japanese counterparts to discuss security concerns, and he may meet with Chinese officials.

Those meetings are designed to reinforce U.S. security commitments to its allies and to encourage an expanded Chinese effort to rein in its belligerent neighbor. Gates is being joined in the meetings by Deputy Secretary of State Jacques Steinberg, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a close White House ally.

Gates in his address said Obama was open to dialogue with North Korea and had pledged to work with "tyrannies that unclench their fists." But Gates said Pyongyang's response to U.S. overtures was disappointing.

"The United States and our allies are open to dialogue, but we will not bend to pressure or provocation," he said. "And on this count, North Korea's latest reply to our overtures isn't exactly something we would characterize as helpful or constructive." At the United Nations, officials continued to negotiate a draft resolution calling for the enforcement of widely ignored sanctions imposed following North Korea's 2006 nuclear test. The sanctions include further limits on shipments of arms and luxury goods.

Meanwhile, international nonproliferation officials said atmospheric tests may be completed next week to determine whether Monday's blast was a nuclear test, as suspected.

Proliferation of nuclear material by North Korea is hardly a new concern. In recent days, administration officials, including Gates, have voiced concerns about the possibility that Pyongyang could seek to sell its nuclear technology. They have noted that North Korea has a track record of spreading its missile and other weapons technology around the world.

Gates has played down any imminent threat posed by North Korea, saying Friday that the Obama administration did not consider the weapons tests of the last week a "crisis."

Gates has said he is in favor of increased U.N.-mandated inspections of North Korean weapons facilities. But the Pentagon is less enthusiastic about searches of North Korean ships against the will of Pyongyang.

The annual security conference in Singapore, organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, has become a key platform for U.S. Defense secretaries to outline their approach to Asia.

Gates portrayed the United States as vigorously engaged throughout the region, but with an emphasis both on military security and diplomatic outreach.

"What we have seen in the U.S. approach to Asia in recent years -- and what I believe we will see in the future -- is a very real shift that reflects new thinking in the U.S. defense strategy overall: a shift toward a re-balanced mix of the so-called 'hard' and 'soft' elements of national power," Gates said.

In recent years, security conference addresses by U.S. Defense secretaries have been aimed squarely at China. In Gates' address, the call for greater Chinese military transparency and dialogue, often the focus of past speeches, received only a cursory mention.

The Bush administration often was criticized for eschewing multilateral approaches to security problems. Gates made clear the new administration has no such reservation.

Challenges such as terrorism, economic turmoil, pandemics and piracy require efforts by groups of nations, he said.

"What these challenges all have in common is that they simply cannot be overcome by one, or even two, countries," he said, "no matter how wealthy or powerful."

 

[CougarKing]

Double yikes! 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090530/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/as_gates_asia_security_summit

Gates: NKorea nuke progress sign of `dark future'
Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes And Vijay Joshi, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 25 mins ago
SINGAPORE – North Korea's progress on nuclear weapons and long-range missiles is "a harbinger of a dark future" and has created an urgent need for more pressure on the reclusive communist government to change its ways, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday.

He said the North's nuclear program does not "at this point" represent a direct military threat to the United States and he does not plan to build up American troops in the region. But the North's efforts pose the potential for an arms race in Asia that could spread beyond the region, he added.

At an annual meeting of defense and security officials, the Pentagon chief said past efforts to cajole North Korea into scrapping its nuclear weapons program have only emboldened it.

North Korea's yearslong use of scare tactics as a bargaining chip to secure aid and other concessions — only to later renege on promises — has worn thin the patience of five nations negotiating with the North, Gates said.

"I think that everyone in the room is familiar with the tactics that the North Koreans use. They create a crisis and the rest of us pay a price to return to the status quo ante," he said in a question and answer session after his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue.

"As the expression goes in the United States, `I am tired of buying the same horse twice.' I think this notion that we buy our way back to the status quo ante is an approach that I personally at least think we ought to think very hard about. There are perhaps other ways to try and get the North Koreans to change their approach," he said.

The sharp statements were echoed by the South Korean defense minister and even China, North Korea's strongest ally. They reflect fears throughout the region that last week's nuclear and missile tests by North Korea could spiral out of control and lead to fighting.

"President Obama has offered an open hand to tyrannies that unclench their fists. He is hopeful, but he is not naive," Gates said in his speech.

"Likewise, the United States and our allies are open to dialogue, but we will not bend to pressure or provocation. And on this count, North Korea's latest reply to our overtures is not exactly something we would characterize as helpful or constructive. We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in Asia — or on us. At the end of the day, the choice to continue as a destitute, international pariah is North Korea's alone to make. The world is waiting."

The North said it would no longer honor a 1953 armistice truce with South Korea after Seoul joined a 90-plus nation security alliance that seeks to curb nuclear trafficking on the seas.

Additionally, the U.N. Security Council is drafting financial and military penalties against North Korea as punishment for the weapons testing. Similar penalties approved after the North's 2006 atomic test have been only sporadically enforced, and largely ignored by China and Russia.

"I think that the combination of their progress in developing nuclear technology, and their progress in developing multistage long-range missiles, is a harbinger of a dark future," Gates said. "What is now central to multilateral efforts ... is to try to peacefully stop those programs before they do in fact become a `clear and present danger,' as the expression goes."

Gates also warned North Korea against secretly selling its weapons technology to other outlaw nations.

Later, at what officials called the first-ever meeting among defense chiefs from the U.S., Japan and South Korea, Gates asked his counterparts to begin considering other steps against the North should it continue to escalate is nuclear program. The military leaders did not discuss specific potential actions, but U.S. officials who attended the half-hour meeting said any steps would be taken in self-defense.

South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee said the talks "could not have come at a better time."

"North Korea perhaps to this point may have mistakenly believed that it could be perhaps rewarded for its wrong behaviors," Lee told reporters. "But that is no longer the case."

Earlier Saturday, Lt. Gen. Ma Xiaotian, the second-in-command of the General Staff of China's military, told the security forum that Beijing "has expressed a firm opposition and grave concern about the nuclear test."

The Obama administration said it planned to send a delegation on Sunday to Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and possibly Moscow over the next week to discuss how to respond to North Korea.

"The reality is that given the objectives of the six-party talks that were established some years ago, it would be hard to point to them at this point as an example of success," Gates said in response to a question after his speech.

Those countries — the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia and Japan — "need to think freshly about where we go from here."

___

On the Net:

Shangri-La Dialogue: http://www.iiss.org/conferences/the-shangri-la-dialogue/

 

[old medic]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6410160.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

June 2, 2009
Fears mount that North Korea is preparing to attack the South
By Richard Lloyd Parry

It was obvious that something was up when the Chinese scarpered. One day there were scores of their fishing boats hoovering up the valuable crabs from the richest of the fishing grounds in the Yellow Sea.

Overnight all but a handful were gone.

Anywhere else the locals would have been glad to have the crabs to themselves but this is no ordinary fishing ground. A few yards from here is the maritime boundary between South and North Korea. “The Chinese fish here because the North Koreans allow them,” a coastguard official said. “If they’ve gone it’s because they’ve had some kind of warning.”

An imminent missile launch into the sea? An armed incursion of North Korean ships? A full-scale invasion of Yeonpyeong, the small South Korean island hard up against the maritime boundary? Too much blood has already been shed in these waters for anyone to risk taking any chances, and for the past week South Korea has been dispatching reinforcements.

No one will discuss numbers for security reasons but sailors and marines, as well as members of the Sea Special Attack Team, the coastguard’s commando force, have been arriving to join the several hundred troops already on Yeonpyeong.

These waters, around the Northern Limit Line, have become the most tense and dangerous patch of sea in Asia.

The rest of the world is pondering what to do about North Korea’s underground test of a nuclear bomb eight days ago. Yesterday fresh reports emerged that the nation was transporting its most advanced missile, capable of reaching Alaska, to a launch site. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said that Britain and other members of the UN Security Council were drafting new sanctions against Pyongyang.

In South Korea the most pressing question is: what next? The nuclear test was just the most alarming in a series of growing North Korean provocations. In April the North launched a long-range rocket over the Pacific, and last week half-a-dozen short-range missiles were fired from launch sites across the country.

Pyongyang announced on Wednesday that it was pulling out of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War — and at the weekend satellite pictures revealed that another long-range rocket was trundling towards the launch pad.

Precedent suggests that if there is still further mischief it may take place here in the Yellow Sea. Twice before, in the past decade, there have been naval battles between North and South off Yeonpyeong island — on both occasions in June during the peak fishing season for blue crab.

Shin Seung Won, 70, a fisherman from Yeonpyeong, was one of those who witnessed the last confrontation, when South Korea was hosting the football World Cup in 2002.

Thunderous explosions were heard out at sea. Soon a South Korean naval ship was unloading the bleeding bodies of dead and injured sailors whose patrol ship had come under fire from a North Korean vessel.

“There was blood everywhere, the sailors were in shock, and one of them had his leg blown off,” Mr Shin says. “It’s impossible to describe my hatred for those commie sons of bitches.”

Six South Korean sailors died, although they claim to have killed a larger number of Northerners — who had used the pretext of monitoring the Chinese crab-fishing vessels to cross the Northern Limit Line.

The South Korean Government of the day played down the action out of a desire to avoid derailing its “sunshine policy” of engagement with the North. The current conservative President, Lee Myung Bak, takes a sterner view.

There seems to be a sense among the security establishment in the South that the country has pussyfooted around the North for long enough and that, with Seoul’s undoubted superiority in equipment, supplies and training, it is time to assert itself. “If they fire two bullets at us we will fire three or four back,” a government official told The Times. “If they fire on us from a shore battery we will take it out.”

The danger of this is more escalation, and of a skirmish developing into a battle and then a full-scale war.

 

[CougarKing]

S. Korea sends ship near North border



Agence France-Presse
First Posted 10:09:00 06/02/2009

Filed Under: Politics, Foreign affairs & international relations, Nuclear Policies


SEOUL—(UPDATE2) South Korea deployed a high-speed patrol boat armed with guided missiles close to the volatile maritime border with North Korea on Tuesday as tensions simmered in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test.

The move follows reports that the North has stepped up military drills in the area after threatening a military strike on the South and is preparing to test-fire a long-range missile.

The South Korean Navy said it was sending the Yoon Young-ha patrol vessel, equipped with ship-to-ship missiles, to the northwestern border area in the Yellow Sea, the scene of past deadly skirmishes between the two Koreas.

"Compared with North Korean boats, the Yoon Young-ha is armed with overwhelming fire power," a naval spokesman told reporters.

The South Korean navy will "punish immediately" any North Korean forces attempting provocative acts in the area, he said.

North Korea's military has reportedly been using high-speed boats for landing exercises near the western border -- twice the site of naval clashes since 1999.

In the most recent, in 2002, six South Korean sailors died and 18 others were wounded while more than 30 North Koreans were killed or injured. North Korea wants the border to be drawn further south.

Tensions have been running high since Kim Jong-Il's regime tested a nuclear bomb for the second time on May 25 and then launched a series of short-range missiles and renounced the truce that ended the Korean war in 1953.

South Korean and US forces on the peninsula are on heightened alert after the North threatened a possible attack in response to Seoul's decision to join a US-led initiative to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The North has warned of "self-defense measures" in response to any tougher international sanctions, and US and South Korean officials say that it appears to be preparing to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Washington warned North Korea Monday not to fire a long-range missile, saying it would further worsen tensions.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said that a launch would be a "clear violation" of a UN Security Council resolution approved after Pyongyang's first nuclear test, in 2006.

Two US defense officials told AFP in Washington that Pyongyang appeared to have moved a long-range missile to its new launch site at Dongchang-ri along its northwestern coast.

But any launch would likely be weeks away given North Korea's technical capacity, said one of the officials, who asked to remain anonymous.

"It'll take a while for North Korea to put anything together," he said.

In April the North fired a Taepodong-2 rocket over Japan from another site on the east coast. It said the launch was to put a satellite in orbit but other nations saw it as a disguised missile test.

South Korean and Southeast Asian leaders Tuesday condemned North Korea's nuclear test as they wrapped up a summit on the southern resort island of Jeju.

President Lee Myung-Bak and the 10 ASEAN leaders in a statement said the test and recent missile launches were "clear violations" of UN Security Council resolutions and a multi-nation nuclear disarmament pact.

Diplomats at the United Nations Security Council are discussing a new resolution which could impose fresh sanctions on the North.

US envoy Susan Rice said there had been progress in talks with her counterparts from Britain, China, France, Russia, Japan and South Korea when they met Monday.

"I think we are making progress and I am hopeful that in due course we will be producing a very worthy and strong resolution," she said.

A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the seven were hoping that, after consultations with their respective capitals, they would be able to present a compromise text to the 15-member Security Council on Tuesday.

  The ROKN makes a notable move during all this tension.

 

[Sonnyjim]

As for preparing for a full scale invasion of the South, 'I think' there would need to be bigger signs then a few amphibious assault exercises and some Chinese fishing boats leaving the area. Troop movements along/close to the border will be in my mind a very obvious telltale sign, not some exercises in the NW side close to China. Here is a possible explanation(with these guys we can never know just speculate) as to the reasons for these new developments.

        0

What's this
SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea's ailing leader Kim Jong-Il has named his youngest son Jong-Un, a 26-year-old Swiss-educated basketball fan, as heir to his communist dynasty, reports said Tuesday.

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Kim's third son has been described as a "chip off the old block" and is seen by experts as a potentially skilled and ruthless leader, like his father, who has kept his regime in place despite years of famine and economic decline.


There has been intense speculation about who would succeed North Korea's "Dear Leader" since he was reported to have suffered a stroke last August. Kim, now 67, is thought to have since recovered and resumed most of his duties.


South Korea's intelligence services have now received word that he has nominated Jong-Un to succeed him, a South Korean lawmaker briefed by intelligence officials said Tuesday.


North Koreans were reported to already be making pledges of loyalty to Jong-Un and singing songs in praise of "General Kim."

Full Link: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090602/world/nkorea_politics_kim_succession

 

[OldSolduer]

Will the son wear those kool glasses like the Dear Leader wears? Damn I gotta get me a set of those!!

 

[a_majoor]

Something a bit more effective than "Smart" diplomacy:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-us-should-overthrow-kim-jong-il/

The U.S. Should Overthrow Kim Jong Il

Posted By Nicholas Guariglia On June 2, 2009 @ 12:30 am In . Column2 05, . Positioning, Asia, Koreas, World News | 36 Comments

Things on the Korean peninsula are heating up by the hour. This [1] latest round of nuclear and missile tests should come as no surprise, given President Obama’s non-response to North Korea’s missile provocations several weeks ago. This time, however, Pyongyang detonated a 20-kiloton device — the ground shook 130 miles away — which is an estimated 20 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb North Korea tested in 2006.

Predictably, the international community bemoaned with platitudinous reprimands — Obama: “gravely concerned”; the United Nations: “deeply worried” — and even more predictably, North Korea responded by [2] threatening war against South Korea, [3] disavowing the 1953 armistice, and [4] swearing to continue production of nuclear weapons. Surprise, surprise.

What should the United States do? The Obama administration seems satisfied with a continued policy of diplomacy and lethargy. Retired Gen. James Jones, President Obama’s national security advisor[5] claims North Korea is not “an imminent threat.” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs [6] states these actions “won’t get North Korea the attention it craves.” While it is true that North Korea’s escalations often serve the purpose of garnering international attention, the gravity of Kim Jong Il’s behavior should not be downplayed. Each escalation brings with it greater technological advancement and thus a higher likelihood that Kim’s destructive technology will end up in the wrong hands.

Rather than continue the same bilateral and multilateral diplomacy that has failed since 1994, the United States should adopt a much tougher approach. Three ideas come to mind.

First, we should reestablish deterrence with a statement or doctrine of “nuclear culpability.” We should say to Kim: “You’ve been caught proliferating nuclear know-how in black market networks and to our enemies in Iran, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere. As long as you continue this behavior, be forewarned: should a nuclear bomb go off in an American city or that of our allies, we will hold you responsible — along with the culprits. We will assume you were involved somehow, either directly or indirectly.”

This would seriously mess up Kim’s feng shui. It would change all cost-benefit ratios he’s ever concocted inside that tiny, warped brain of his. The little guy is obsessed with maintaining power and by putting him in a position where events would be outside of his control — where he would wake up unsure if someone else’s hostility to the U.S. would lead to his own downfall — we could (and I emphasize could) go a long way in altering Kim’s immediate behavior. This is not a long-term strategy, however: “behavioral change” and “Kim Jong Il” do not belong in the same sentence for any sustained period of time.

Second, we should broadcast radio transmissions into North Korea. Kim Jong Il tells his “subjects” he was born under a rainbow and walked on the moon. According to widespread rumors, he once held a press conference to claim he invented the toaster oven. He wears high heels. He kidnaps Japanese girls, smuggles them to Korea, and chases them around his palaces. In other words, he’s as clinically insane as he is objectively evil. Imagine Charles Manson taking over a country and producing enough plutonium for a nice personal nuke arsenal. Not a pretty scenario.

Yet despite all this — despite the dungeons, the meat grinders, the two million dead from famine, and the widespread malnutrition — the North Korean people, having been subjected to decades of brainwashing and indoctrination, still praise and worship the “dear leader” for every waking moment of their lives.

How could such a nationwide cult-like psychosis be reversed? It would be hard, no doubt, but we should still start a serious reverse-propaganda program of beaming real information into North Korea, similar to Radio Free Europe at the end of the Cold War. We should weaken the tyrant’s rule from within; when done properly, it works almost every time. To paraphrase my friend Michael Ledeen: there are many ways to destroy a dictator when you have his oppressed people on your side.

Third, we should let Japan go nuclear. Charles Krauthammer [7] recommends this approach, which makes great geopolitical sense. We should encourage the Japanese to amend their pacifistic constitution and start popping out A-bombs like Toyotas. A nuclear Japan is no reason to fret: it is a mature democracy, a loyal ally, and a responsible and civilized society. This isn’t the ’40s anymore.

Japan’s nuclearization — which should be temporary and stated as such — would likely worry the Chinese enough to compel them to come down hard on their client state. Getting China to turn on North Korea is the real key and a nuclear Japan would certainly do the trick. Should Beijing remain unfazed by Tokyo going nuclear, maybe President Obama could send Don Rumsfeld on another one of those “special envoy” ambassadorships — this time, to the Far East to call China’s bluff on Taiwan.

Having spent way more time in “diplomacy school” than anyone’s mental health should allow, I can personally attest: active diplomats, retired diplomats-turned-professors, and aspiring would-be diplomats refuse to recognize that some things in this world fall outside of their professional purview. Could we imagine any other profession — say, anesthesiology or lumberjacking — making that same bold claim about itself?

Kim has made a mockery of our diplomacy with him for nearly two decades. He soaked President Clinton for all he was worth, [8] clicking champagne glasses with Madeleine Albright all the while perfecting the art of plutonium production. During the Bush administration, Kim reneged on every preliminary agreement before the preliminary agreement could get its trousers off. And now he’s manhandling Mr. Obama to the point of embarrassment.

Faith is the belief in things unseen and unproven, and Obama certainly has faith in his unproven ability to influence bad actors and bend them to his will. Peter Wehner of Commentary [9] writes of Obama’s faith in diplomacy like so:

During the campaign, whenever asked how he would address a thorny foreign policy issue, Mr. Obama invoked the need for diplomacy — first, last, and always. The failure to reach agreement was found in some misunderstanding, some misperception, some problem of communication that could be cleared up by “talking.” Even those of us who don’t rule out the benefits of negotiating were skeptical about Obama’s seemingly limitless faith in it, or the ease with which he seemed to think these problems could be solved.

Enough is enough. Kim Jong Il has proven he will stop at nothing to produce and proliferate nuclear weapons, and that is a no-no. Diplomacy has failed. Talking for the sake of talking is not working. Serious powers ought to be emphasizing results, not process. “Soft power” is a problem cured by Cialis — not a national security strategy for North Korea. It’s time we started working to bring that twisted, Lilliputian, Chia Pet miscreant down.

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-us-should-overthrow-kim-jong-il/

URLs in this post:
[1] latest round: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090527/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_nuclear_52
[2] threatening: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/asia/28korea.html
[3] disavowing: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052600555.html?wprss=rss_world
[4] swearing: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090527/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_nuclear_69
[5] claims: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/national-security-adviser-downplays-n.-korea-threat-2009-05-27.h
tml

[6] states: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090527/pl_afp/nkoreanuclearweaponsuswhouse_20090527180103
[7] recommends: http://www.therightscoop.com/problem-north-korea-answer-nuclear-japan/
[8] clicking: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4443&page=6
[9] writes: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/67382

 

[CougarKing]

So Moscow turns its back on an old ally?

MOSCOW/SEOUL (Reuters) - Russia has suggested that it may back economic sanctions against North Korea to persuade Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear arms program, while fears grew that the North is about to test another long-range missile.

Diplomats in New York have been in closed-door negotiations for more than a week on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would broaden sanctions imposed on North Korea after its first nuclear test in October 2006.

Traditionally, Russia and China have been reluctant to back sanctions. But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev indicated on Wednesday that was he was prepared to support U.S-led efforts to draft a sanctions resolution against Pyongyang that the 15-nation Security Council could approve by next week.

(....)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303362.html

 

[CougarKing]

Just another update on the predicament of those two US reporters being held by North Korea for alleged "acts of hostility and spying" against the DPRK government.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090604/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_journalists_held

American journalists head to trial in North Korea
Associated Press Writers Jean H. Lee And William Foreman, Associated Press Writers – 2 hrs 5 mins ago
SEOUL, South Korea – Two American journalists headed to trial Thursday before North Korea's highest court on charges they crossed into the country illegally and engaged in "hostile acts" — allegations that could draw a 10-year sentence in a labor camp.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore's California-based Current TV, were arrested March 17 near the North Korean border while on a reporting trip to China.

Their trial began at a time of mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula following the regime's provocative May 25 nuclear test.

As the United Nations and Washington discussed how to punish the regime for its defiance, there were fears the women could become political pawns in the standoff with Pyongyang.

Analyst Choi Eun-suk, a professor of North Korean law at Kyungnam University, said the court could convict the women, and then the government could use them as bargaining chips with the United States.

"The North is likely to release and deport them to the U.S. — if negotiations with the U.S. go well," Choi said.

The two nations do not have diplomatic relations, and experts called Pyongyang's belligerence a bid to grab President Barack Obama's attention.

North Korea's official news agency said the trial would begin by mid-afternoon, but hours later, there was no word on the status of the proceedings. A State Department spokesman said American officials had seen no independent confirmation that the case was under way.

North Korea has said no observers will be allowed to watch.

Few details are known about how Ling and Lee have been treated since they were arrested nearly three months ago. So far, family members have not reported mistreatment.

North Korea's government is notorious for its brutality, but the most recent accounts indicate the regime has softened its treatment of imprisoned foreigners. Still, the experience has left scars on almost all who endured it.

In 1996, Evan C. Hunziker was detained for three months after being accused of spying. The 26-year-old American entered North Korea by swimming across the Yalu River on the Chinese border.

Hunziker, whose mother was Korean, said he went there out of curiosity and "to preach the Gospel." Other reports said he got drunk and decided to go for a swim. Hunziker was freed after New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was then a congressman, negotiated his release.

Hunziker's father said his son refused to talk about his detention, saying only that he was treated humanely and that the food was bad. In a letter to his mother, he said he was moved from a prison to a hotel.

The North Koreans initially demanded a payment of $100,000 as a fine but eventually agreed on $5,000 to settle Hunziker's hotel bill. The family agreed to pay.

Hunziker, who had a long history of drug, alcohol and legal problems, committed suicide a month after he was freed.

Three years later, the North Koreans detained retired Japanese journalist Takashi Sugishima, who was accused of using a hand-held tape recorder and camera to collect intelligence for Japan and South Korea — an allegation he denied.

Sugishima said he was held for two years in a warm, comfortable cell in a mountain detention facility. He was given three hot meals a day and never tortured.

"The treatment I received was more humane than I expected," Sugishima said. Still, he added, the experience was "extremely trying," and he worried constantly that he might not survive.

Some of the harshest conditions were endured by Ali Lameda, a poet and member of Venezuela's Communist Party. He said he was invited to North Korea in 1966 to work as a Spanish translator but quickly became disillusioned with the propaganda.

The next year, Lameda said, he was accused of spying, sabotage and infiltration. He was detained in a damp, filthy cell for a year without trial and survived on dirty scraps of bread and watery vegetable soup. He was often interrogated from noon to midnight. Once, the guards beat his swollen bare feet.

"Whilst in my cell, I could hear the cries of other prisoners," Lameda wrote in an account provided to Amnesty International. "You can soon learn to distinguish whether a man is crying from fear or pain or from madness in such a place."

During the day, detainees were kept awake because the guards said prisoners could not ponder their guilt while asleep, he said.

Shortly after his release, Lameda was tried again. There were no formal charges or specific allegations against him in the one-day hearing, he said. Court officials kept demanding that he confess his guilt.

He was sentenced to 20 years in a freezing labor camp near the town of Sariwon, about 40 miles south of Pyongyang. The camp had 6,000 prisoners who worked 12 hours a day making vehicles and mattresses.

"The cell that I was taken to had no heating except for a pipe running through it which became warm for approximately five minutes each night," he said. "The windows were iced-up and my feet froze."

Lameda served six years before being released again in 1974 without explanation.

He was luckier than his colleague, French translator Jacques Sedillot, who was arrested at the same time and suffered the same treatment. Sedillot was released with the Venezuelan poet but died before he could leave North Korea.

State-run media have not defined the exact charges against the women from Current TV, but South Korean legal experts said conviction for "hostility" or espionage could mean five to 10 years in a labor camp.

Choi, the professor, said a ruling by the top court would be final.

The State Department has not divulged details about negotiations for the journalists' freedom.

Back home, the reporters' families pleaded for clemency.

Ling's sister, TV journalist Lisa Ling, said on CNN's "Larry King Live" that the women "are essentially in the midst of this nuclear standoff."

She urged the governments to "try to communicate, to try and bring our situation to a resolution on humanitarian grounds — to separate the issues."

In several U.S. cities, supporters of the two women held vigils Wednesday for their release. In New York, dozens of people turned out in a drenching rain, holding yellow chrysanthemums. Gatherings also took place in San Francisco and Santa Monica, Calif.

___

Associated Press writers Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul, William C. Mann and Foster Klug in Washington, Ginny Byrne in New York, and John Mone in Santa Monica, Calif., contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

Facebook page for Lee and Ling: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid60755553149

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?vxaxXdKcA5tM

 

[CougarKing]

Another update:

Agence France-Presse - 6/7/2009 3:35 PM GMT
US considers returning N.Korea to terror list
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that Washington is considering putting North Korea back on its list of countries that sponsor terrorism following Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests.

In an interview with ABC television, Clinton also said Washington would do everything it can to stop shipments of North Korean nuclear materials and to shut off Pyongyang's flow of money.

She was asked for a response to a letter from several US senators asking President Barack Obama to put Pyongyang back on the terror list, from which it was removed in October 2008 under former president George W. Bush.

"Well, we're going to look at it," she said.

"There's a process for it. Obviously we would want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism," she added. "We're just beginning to look at it."

Obama said Saturday that "North Korea's actions over the last couple of months have been extraordinarily provocative."

The North conducted its second nuclear test last month and defied international criticism by firing a volley of short-range missiles and threatening to attack the capitalist South.

At a press conference in Normandy, where Obama was visiting to mark the 65th D-Day anniversary, the president also said the UN Security Council is working toward a new resolution on North Korea.

He insisted even China and Russia, the two major powers closest to the North, were taking a tougher approach. "They understand how destabilizing North Korea's actions are," Obama said.

Clinton said the United States was working hard to create a mechanism that would allow for interdiction of suspect North Korean shipments, acknowledging that some countries had "legitimate concerns" about the precedent that would set.

But she said, "We will do everything we can to both interdict it and prevent it and shut off their flow of money."

"If we do not take significant and effective action against the North Koreans now, we'll spark an arms race in northeast Asia."

"And so part of what we're doing is, again, sharing with other countries our calculus of the risks and the dangers that would lie ahead if we don't take very strong action," Clinton said.

Sixteen Republican senators called Wednesday for placing the communist regime back on the terror list, saying the North's "provocative actions must have immediate consequences."

Ailing North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's "regime has never stopped supporting terrorism or joined meaningful negotiations," said Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

"In fact, North Korea has done just the opposite and moved closer to equipping terrorists with nuclear weapons."

DeMint and seven other lawmakers had sent a letter to Clinton a day earlier urging her to "immediately" place North Korea back on the blacklist.

Reinstating North Korea on the watchlist would reactivate sanctions lifted in October, when the United States said North Korea had agreed to steps to verify its nuclear disarmament and pledged to resume disabling its atomic plants.

Obama would be able to waive the designation if he certifies to the congress that North Korea has fully disclosed its nuclear activities, has not illegally spread nuclear or missile know-how, has not supported any terrorist groups, and has met other conditions.

North Korea was added to the blacklist on January 20, 1988, following the bombing by its agents of a KAL plane on November 29, 1987 which killed all 115 on board.

The State Department said late last year that the North was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since that bombing.

 

[CougarKing]

The only thing though to worry about is whether Pyongyang will really carry out its invasion/war threat once the US starts intercepting North Korean ships.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/world/asia/08korea.html?_r=1&hp

U.S. Weighs Intercepting North Korean Shipments
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: June 7, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration signaled Sunday that it was seeking a way to interdict, possibly with China’s help, North Korean sea and air shipments suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear technology.

The administration also said it was examining whether there was a legal basis to reverse former President George W. Bush’s decision last year to remove the North from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

The reference to interdictions — preferably at ports or airfields in countries like China, but possibly involving riskier confrontations on the high seas — was made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She was the administration’s highest-ranking official to talk publicly about such a potentially provocative step as a response to North Korea’s second nuclear test, conducted two weeks ago.

While Mrs. Clinton did not specifically mention assistance from China, other administration officials have been pressing Beijing to take such action under Chinese law.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Mrs. Clinton said the United States feared that if the test and other recent actions by North Korea did not lead to “strong action,” there was a risk of “an arms race in Northeast Asia” — an oblique reference to the concern that Japan would reverse its long-held ban against developing nuclear weapons.

So far it is not clear how far the Chinese are willing to go to aid the United States in stopping North Korea’s profitable trade in arms, the isolated country’s most profitable export. But the American focus on interdiction demonstrates a new and potentially far tougher approach to North Korea than both President Clinton and Mr. Bush, in his second term, took as they tried unsuccessfully to reach deals that would ultimately lead North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Obama, aides say, has decided that he will not offer North Korea new incentives to dismantle the nuclear complex at Yongbyon that the North previously promised to abandon.

“I’m tired of buying the same horse twice,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said last week, while touring an antimissile site in Alaska that the Bush administration built to demonstrate its preparedness to destroy North Korean missiles headed toward the United States. (So far, the North Koreans have not yet successfully tested a missile of sufficient range to reach the United States, though there is evidence that they may be preparing for another test of their long-range Taepodong-2 missile.)

Mr. Obama referred to the same string of broken deals in France on Saturday, telling reporters, “I don’t think there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilizing the region and we just react in the same ways.” He added, “We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation.”

While Mr. Obama was in the Middle East and Europe, several senior officials said the president’s national security team had all but set aside the central assumption that guided American policy toward North Korea over the past 16 years and two presidencies: that the country would be willing to ultimately abandon its small arsenal of nuclear weapons in return for some combination of oil, nuclear power plants, money, food and guarantees that the United States would not topple its government, the world’s last Stalinesque regime.

Now, after examining the still-inconclusive evidence about the results of North Korea’s second nuclear test, the administration has come to different conclusions: that Pyonyang’s top priority is to be recognized as a nuclear state, that it is unwilling to bargain away its weapons and that it sees tests as a way to help sell its nuclear technology.

“This entirely changes the dynamic of how you deal with them,” a senior national security aide said.

While Mr. Obama is willing to reopen the six-party talks that Mr. Bush began — the other participants are Japan, South Korea, Russia and China — he has no intention, aides say, of offering new incentives to get the North to fulfill agreements from 1994, 2005 and 2008; all were recently renounced.

“Clinton bought it once, Bush bought it again, and we’re not going to buy it a third time,” one of Mr. Obama’s chief strategists said last week, referring to the Yongbyon plant, where the North reprocesses spent nuclear fuel into bomb-grade plutonium.

While some officials privately acknowledged that they would still like to roll back what one called North Korea’s “rudimentary” nuclear capability, a more realistic goal is to stop the country from devising a small weapon deliverable on a short-, medium- or long-range missile.

In conducting any interdictions, the United States could risk open confrontation with North Korea. That prospect — and the likelihood of escalating conflict if the North resisted an inspection — is why China has balked at American proposals for a resolution by the United Nations Security Council that would explicitly allow interceptions at sea. A previous Security Council resolution, passed after the North’s first nuclear test in 2006, allowed interdictions “consistent with international law.” But that term was never defined, and few of the provisions were enforced.

North Korea has repeatedly said it would regard any interdiction as an act of war, and officials in Washington have been trying to find ways to stop the shipments without a conflict. Late last week, James B. Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, visited Beijing with a delegation of American officials, seeking ideas from China about sanctions, including financial pressure, that might force North Korea to change direction.

“The Chinese face a dilemma that they have always faced,” a senior administration official said. “They don’t want North Korea to become a full nuclear weapons state. But they don’t want to cause the state to collapse.” They have been walking a fine line, the official said, taking a tough position against the North of late, but unwilling to publicly embrace steps that would put China in America’s camp.

To counter the Chinese concern, Mr. Steinberg and his delegation argued to the Chinese that failing to crack down on North Korea would prompt reactions that Beijing would find deeply unsettling, including a greater American military presence in the region, and more calls in Japan for that country to develop its own weapons.

Mrs. Clinton seemed to reflect this concern in the interview on Sunday. “We will do everything we can to both interdict it and prevent it and shut off their flow of money,” she said. “If we do not take significant and effective action against the North Koreans now, we’ll spark an arms race in Northeast Asia. I don’t think anybody wants to see that.”

While Mrs. Clinton also said the State Department was examining whether North Korea should be placed back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, she acknowledged that there was a legal process for it. “Obviously we would want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism,” she said.

That evidence may be hard to come by. While North Korea has engaged in missile sales, it has not been linked to terrorism activity for many years. And North Korea’s restoration to the list would be largely symbolic, because it already faces numerous economic sanctions.

 

[CougarKing]

That North Korean kangaroo court just sentenced those two US journalists to 12 years' hard labour.

latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-norkor-journalists8-2009jun08,0,3667915.story?page=2

North Korea sentences 2 U.S. reporters to prison
June 8 2009


"If things are business as usual in North Korea, it would suggest the journalists would be released quickly. If not, they could be held for a long time," Snyder said.

North Korean labor camps are notorious for their high death rates because of malnutrition and overwork. But thus far, the women have been fairly well treated, housed in a Pyongyang guest house and allowed occasional telephone calls. The Swedish ambassador has also been permitted to visit them.

"The North Koreans are not in a hurry to release them. They see them as valuable pawns," said an aide official who works in Pyongyang, speaking on condition of anonymity a few days before the trial began.

Both women are married and Lee, who is Korean American, has a 4-year-old daughter. In recent days, their plight has drawn worldwide attention.

"We appeal to the North Korean judicial authorities to show the utmost clemency, and we hope the trial will result in the acquittal and release of the two American journalists," Reporters Without Borders said in statement last week. "We urge the judges trying the case to follow the example set by their Iranian counterparts, who released U.S. journalist Roxana Saberi last month."


Over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had called for the women's release.

Clinton said she has spoken with foreign officials with influence in North Korea and explored the possibility of sending an envoy to the North, but suggested that no one would be sent during the trial.

Many say political uncertainty in North Korea cast a pall over the trial. After suffering a debilitating stroke last year, strongman Kim Jong Il is reportedly planning to name a successor, rumored to be his youngest son.

The possible power vacuum has created a subtle battle of ideologies as communist hard-liners seek to crush those in favor of social reforms and a more open policy toward the West.

In recent weeks, as the trial date got closer, state-run news in North Korea released condemnations of the women, alluding to their "confirmed crimes" and "illegally intruding into [North Korean] territory."

Experts believe the trial serves as a political litmus test. They say North Korea had an opportunity to distinguish the journalists' case from the political realm and temper an international image further damaged by the nuclear test.

But now those hopes have been cast into doubt with today's verdict.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean studies, said the world will wait to see how Pyongyang handles its prisoners.

"Now that the results came out from the trial, the next step will be a political pardon and a diplomatic resolution," he said. "It's highly likely that Al Gore will visit Pyongyang as early as late this week."

The one on the right is Laura Ling.

Euna Lee

 

[CougarKing]

And it seems that Pyongyang continues to want to escalate the situation:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_missile

North Korea bans ships from coastal waters
Associated Press Writer Jae-soon Chang, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 25 mins ago
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea has warned fishermen and boat captains to stay away from the country's east coast, Japan's coast guard said Monday, in another sign the communist regime is planning to fire more missiles after its recent nuclear test.

Pyongyang also threatened Monday to retaliate with a "super hard-line" response if sanctions were imposed.

North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said Pyongyang "has made clear many times that we will consider any sanction a declaration of war and will take due corresponding self-defense measures." The commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency did not elaborate.

The U.N. Security Council has been discussing imposing sanctions against the North in response to its May 25 nuclear test, while Washington considers introducing its own financial sanctions.

On Monday, Japan's coast guard said it picked up a North Korean radio signal banning ships from waters off Wonsan from June 10-30. South Korean media have reported since last week that the North is planning to fire several medium-range missiles from the eastern coastal city of Anbyon near Wonsan.

(...)

 

[CougarKing]

Yikes!!! 

North Korea would use nuclear weapons in a 'merciless offensive'

Associated Press

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

North Korea today said it would use nuclear weapons in a "merciless offensive" if provoked — its latest bellicose rhetoric apparently aimed at deterring any international punishment for its recent atomic test blast.

The tensions emanating from Pyongyang are beginning to hit nascent business ties with the South: a Seoul-based fur manufacturer became the first South Korean company to announce Monday it was pulling out of an industrial complex in the North's border town of Kaesong.

The complex, which opened in 2004, is a key symbol of rapprochement between the two Koreas but the goodwill is evaporating quickly in the wake of North Korea's nuclear test on May 25 and subsequent missile tests.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-would-use-nuclear-weapons-in-a-merciless-offensive-1700590.html

Pyongyang raised tensions a notch by reviving its rhetoric in a commentary in the state-run Minju Joson newspaper today.

"Our nuclear deterrent will be a strong defensive means...as well as a merciless offensive means to deal a just retaliatory strike to those who touch the country's dignity and sovereignty even a bit," said the commentary, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

It appeared to be the first time that North Korea referred to its nuclear arsenal as "offensive" in nature. Pyongyang has long claimed that its nuclear weapons program is a deterrent and only for self-defense against what it calls US attempts to invade it.
The tough talk came as South Korea and the US lead an effort at the UN Security Council to have the North punished for its nuclear test with tough sanctions.

Seoul's Yonhap news agency reported today that South Korea had doubled the number of naval ships around the disputed sea border with the North amid concern the communist neighbor could provoke an armed clash there — the scene of skirmishes in 1999 and 2002.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff declined to confirm the report, but said the North has not shown any unusual military moves.

Relations between the two Koreas have significantly worsened since a pro-US, conservative government took office in Seoul last year, advocating a tougher policy on the North. Since then, reconciliation talks have been cut off and all key joint projects except the factory park in Kaesong have been suspended.

Some 40,000 North Koreans are employed at the zone, making everything from electronics and watches to shoes and utensils, providing a major source of revenue for the cash-strapped North. The park combines South Korean technology and management expertise with cheap North Korean labor.

A total of 106 South Korean companies operate in the park. That number will go down by the end of the month when Skinnet, the fur-maker, completes its pullout.

A Skinnet company official said the decision was primarily over "security concerns" for its employees, and also because of a decline in orders from clients concerned over possible disruptions to operations amid the soaring tensions.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.

The industrial park's fate has been in doubt since last month when North Korea threatened to scrap all contracts on running the joint complex and said it would write new rules of its own and the South must accept them or pull out of the zone.

The companies have also been concerned by the detention of a South Korean man working at the complex by North Korean authorities since late March for allegedly denouncing the regime's political system.

The two sides are to hold talks on the fate of the park Thursday.

Intensifying its confrontation with the US, North Korea handed down 12-year prison terms to two detained American journalists on Monday.

 

[CougarKing]

One MSM take on how "another Korean War" (the 1st one technically isn't over) could start and be conducted:

(From TIME Magazine via Yahoo News)

Could the U.S. Be Drawn into a New Korean War?

By MARK THOMPSON / WASHINGTON Mark Thompson / Washington – 20 mins ago
To fear a new Korean War is historically inaccurate, because, in fact, the last one never ended: the world's most dangerous border, across which some 2 million North Korean, U.S. and South Korean troops face each other along the 38th parallel of the Korean Peninsula is, in fact, simply an armistice line. On July 27, 1953, the U.S. and North Korea signed a truce pausing, but not ending, a war that claimed more than 2 million lives, including those of 36,940 U.S. troops. And the North's recent nuclear and missile saber-rattling has many growing nervous about the potential for a resumption of hostilities.


North Korea, in fact, announced on May 27 that it was withdrawing from the armistice. It declared it could no longer guarantee the safety of ships sailing through the Yellow Sea off its western coast, and would no longer respect the legal status of several islands off South Korea's coast. It also vowed to attack South Korea if North Korean vessels suspected of smuggling nuclear and missile components are stopped and searched by a U.S.-led U.N. naval armada - a proposal currently under discussion. (See pictures of North Koreans at the polls.)


U.S. officials are concerned that political instability inside the Pyongyang regime may raise the danger of confrontation. "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il has been weakened by a stroke suffered late last year, his 26-year old heir apparent is not yet ready to take the reins and the North Korean military is eager to maintain its preeminence in the coming political succession. "Any time you have a combination of this behavior of doing provocative things in order to excite a response - plus succession questions - you have a potentially dangerous mixture," said U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair on Monday.


Despite the rising tensions, however, a number of factors militate against a new chapter being opened in the Korean War. South Korea, backed by the U.S., doesn't want war, because the North has some 13,000 artillery tubes aimed at Seoul and the more than 10 million South Koreans living within 30 miles of the DMZ. North Korea, backed by China, doesn't want war because if it comes, it all but guarantees the collapse of Kim's regime, which is also the family business. (See pictures of the rise of Kim Jong Il.)


Washington has made clear that it wants to solve this latest flare-up via diplomatic channels. "Our focus is now - and has been and likely will continue to be - on coming up with diplomatic and economic pressures that will persuade the North to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the platforms to deliver them," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said June 8. And if that fails? "We all need to be prudent about our planning for defensive measures." That suggests neither Washington nor Seoul is going to take preemptive military action.


The immediate priority of the U.S. and its allies is to prevent North Korea from spreading its nuclear know-how around the world. And their own lever is China's influence over the hermit regime. "There's a view that if you want to get the Chinese to act on North Korea, you need to signal a willingness to take military action," Scott Snyder, a Korea expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said last week. "But at the same time, how do you do that - especially in conjunction with allies - without the Chinese feeling that you're trying to manipulate them tactically?"


China's role will be key, according to Larry Wortzel, who served two tours as a U.S. Army military attachÉ in Beijing. "China will not let North Korea collapse," he was told by several top People's Liberation Army officials during the Clinton Administration, according to his account in the latest issue of the U.S. Army journal Parameters. Beijing will help Pyongyang survive any sanctions. "There are limits to what the United States and its allies can do," he warns, "unless they want a complete break with, or to invite conflict with, China." China's motives are twofold: keep North Korean refugees from flooding across the border, as well as keep a U.S. ally from emerging on China's doorstep.


If it came to war, however, a key goal of any large North Korean attack would be to launch as many shells and rockets toward Seoul from its artillery tubes and launchers, many self-propelled or on railcars. The goal of U.S. and South Korean forces would be to destroy that artillery capability before too many rounds could be launched. While North Korea would build any attack around its 1.2 million–strong army, the U.S. and South Korea would rely more on their air and naval forces.


The Pentagon has largely refrained from saber-rattling, and is not planning to reinforce the 28,000 U.S. troops now in South Korea, or the 35,000 stationed in Japan. When pressed, U.S. military leaders concede that even their defensive plans will be tougher to implement given the fact that they currently have roughly 175,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. "There would have to be a level of ad hoc conglomeration of forces," General James Conway, the Marine commandant, told a Senate panel June 2. "But in the end, I am convinced we would prevail."


See pictures of North Korea's secrets and lies at LIFE.com.