Nuclear North Korea

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Valdez

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Surprised this hasn't been posted before now.

South Korea formally announced Tuesday that it would join a U.S.-led effort to crack down on trafficking in weapons of mass destruction in response to North Korea's new nuclear test.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's government said it would join the 6-year-old Proliferation Security Initiative because of "the grave threat WMD and missile proliferation is posing to global peace," Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said.

The effort is aimed at interdicting shipments of weapons technology, a rare source of hard currency for North Korea, but Moon said the south would continue to uphold a shipping agreement with the north.

North Korea previously had protested any move by South Korea to join the initiative. There was no immediate response to Tuesday's declaration, but North Korea's state-run news agency said in April that any effort to join the initiative would be regarded as "a declaration of war."

The North Korea's nuclear bomb test -- its second -- reverberated around the world Monday, with the U.N. Security Council condemning it as a "clear violation" of international law and even Pyongyang's closest ally criticizing the exercise. China said North Korea "disregarded the opposition of the international community" to conduct the test.

"The Chinese government expresses firm opposition to this," a statement from Beijing's foreign ministry announced. It urged Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear program, abide by its existing commitments and "cease any actions that might cause the situation to deteriorate further."

North Korea agreed in 2008 to scrap its nuclear weapons program, which it said had produced enough plutonium for about seven atomic bombs, in exchange for economic aid. But the deal foundered over verification and disclosure issues, and the North expelled international inspectors and announced plans to restart its main nuclear reactor.

At the United Nations, Security Council members took about an hour Monday to express their unanimous condemnation of the move. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin called Monday's test "very serious" and said it "needs to have a strong response."

In a statement authorized by the council members, Churkin said the test was a "clear violation" of previous resolutions calling for North Korea to avoid provocative steps such as nuclear weapons or missile tests. And U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said Washington will seek "strong measures" against North Korea.

"The U.S. thinks that this is a grave violation of international law and a threat to regional and international peace and security," she said.

North Korea first tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006. Pyongyang had threatened lat month to carry out a new test after the Security Council condemned its test-firing of a long-range rocket and extended economic sanctions against the nation, which is in dire need of food and energy assistance. Watch how Pyongyang has used nuclear tests to gain concessions »

Monday's blast, conducted just before 10 a.m. (9 p.m. Sunday ET) showed up on seismographs with the punch of a magnitude 4.7 earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

U.S. intelligence agencies estimated that the 2006 North Korean test produced a blast equivalent to less than 1,000 tons of TNT, a fraction of the size of the bombs the United States dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.

Russia estimated the force of Monday's blast at 10 to 20 kilotons, in the same neighborhood as the early U.S. devices, but the United States said it was still analyzing data from the test.

Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency said only that the latest test was safely conducted "on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology of its control." The North Koreans followed up with a short-range missile launch as well, according to the White House.

In Washington, President Obama said North Korea "is not only deepening its own isolation, it's also inviting stronger international pressure."

"North Korea has previously committed to abandoning its nuclear program. Instead of following through on that commitment, it has chosen to ignore that commitment," Obama said. Watch more analysis on the test »

Less than three weeks ago, the White House announced a diplomatic effort to restart the stalled six-party nuclear talks. Several analysts said the test could be an effort to improve Pyongyang's bargaining position or a sign of a power struggle within North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's government.

Han Park, a scholar at the University of Georgia, said North Korea wants normal diplomatic relations and a non-aggression pact with the United States and is "angry enough and hungry enough to sell anything they can put their hands on."

"They are a big-time weapons trader," Park said. "If we are going to try to do something about nonproliferation, we have to include diplomatic relations with North Korea."

Analysts say North Korea is years from having a weapon it can put atop a long-range missile like those in the United States, Chinese or Russian arsenals. But Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the test shows that Pyongyang is becoming "increasingly belligerent." Watch how the test may have taken world by surprise »

Kim is widely reported to have suffered a stroke in August and has been absent from many public functions in recent months. In April, he named his son, Kim Jong-un, and brother-in-law, Jang Song Thaek, to the country's powerful National Defense Commission, suggesting that his son may be his heir.

Rebecca Johnson, executive director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, said Kim "needs to demonstrate domestically that he is in charge."

"Doing the nuclear tests, firing a couple of missiles, is a way to do that -- perhaps the only way to do that -- because he can't feed the people," she said.

North and South Korea technically remain in a state of war because no treaty formalized the truce that ended the Korean War in 1953. The conflict also involved China and the United States, and about 25,000 U.S. troops are still based in South Korea. But Johnson played down the prospect of a renewed conflict, saying Pyongyang is "playing a political game."

"It causes a lot of anxiety in South Korea and Japan, but they are sensible countries," she said. "They know that this can be dealt with politically and diplomatically. This is not a situation where anyone should start saber-rattling and threatening to go to war."
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http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/25/nkorea.nuclear.test.outrage/index.html
 
I think they just wanted to redeem themselves from that firecracker they set off in 2006. What a joke that was. Oh well, they've had their fun. I'm not worried.
 
*Head-desk*

Dang I lost by 10 minutes. XD
Was going to post this

Anyways...yeah...the test a few years ago was a dud. Not really sure about this one. I've heard that the Russians are saying this is as strong as the 1945 Atom Bombs.

Not as strong as the H/N- Bombs today but still...

Eh. As usual the N.Korean Government is looking for attention. And the internal debate on the successor issue is another reason for today's test.
 
I live by Seattle. You can bet your life I'm worried about North Korea. I'm hoping we can shut down this path of war that has been opened too long. When you mess with nature like this, it can mess with you royally.
 
Ryuutakeshi said:
I live by Seattle. You can bet your life I'm worried about North Korea. I'm hoping we can shut down this path of war that has been opened too long. When you mess with nature like this, it can mess with you royally.
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What do you propose we do? Our important trading partners, China and South Korea, have an interest in keeping North Korea "stable" in the sense that they don't want millions of (poor) refugees flooding their borders and ravaging their already depressed economies.
 
Netto Azure said:
What do you propose we do? Our important trading partners, China and South Korea, have an interest in keeping North Korea "stable" in the sense that they don't want millions of (poor) refugees flooding their borders and ravaging their already depressed economies.
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I am not saying I have a plan. I'm jsut saying we should do something.
 
I think they want attention, especially seeing how Obama has drawn attention away from them to Iran (so to speak). Sanctions could work, but seeing how unstable the politics of this country are, it probably won't stop them.
 
Because I rarely read so much text on the net is this a proper summary?
North Korea has nukes. South Korea wants to work with the US to stop the weapon traficking but North Korea won't allow it and threat to use their nuclear bombs. Did I get anything right?
 
Another nuke test I see, on Memorial Day, no less, and Kim Jong-Il isn't exactly done defying the world just yet.:

North Korea launched tests Tuesday of two more short-range missiles a day after detonating a nuclear bomb underground, a news report said, pushing the regime's confrontation with world powers further despite the threat of U.N. Security Council action.

Two missiles — one ground-to-air, the other ground-to-ship — with a range of about 80 miles (130 kilometers) were test-fired from an east coast launch pad, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing an unnamed government official.

South Korean spy chief Won Sei-hoon had informed lawmakers earlier Tuesday that a missile test was likely, according to the office of Park Young-sun, a legislator who attended the closed-door briefing.

Yonhap reported that North Korea was preparing to launch a third missile from a west coast site, again citing an unnamed official.

North Korea appeared to be displaying its might a day after conducting an underground atomic test in the northeast that the U.N. Security Council condemned as a "clear violation" of a 2006 resolution banning the regime from developing its nuclear program.

France called for new sanctions, while the U.S. and Japan pushed for strong action against North Korea for testing a bomb that Russian officials said was comparable in power to those that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

South Korea, meanwhile, announced it would join a maritime web of more than 90 nations that intercept ships suspected of spreading weapons of mass destruction — a move North Korea warned would constitute an act of war.

North Korea had threatened in recent weeks to carry out a nuclear test and fire long-range missiles unless the Security Council apologized for condemning Pyongyang's April 5 launch of a rocket the U.S., Japan and other nations called a test of its long-range missile technology. The North has said it put a satellite into orbit as part of its peaceful space development program.

Monday morning's nuclear test appeared to catch the world by surprise, but Won told lawmakers that Beijing and Washington knew Pyongyang was planning a test some 20-25 minutes before it was carried out, said Choi Kyu-ha, an aide to lawmaker Park.

Won said Pyongyang warned it would test the bomb unless the head of the Security Council offered an immediate apology. Russia said the test went off at 9:54 a.m. local time (0054 GMT) Monday. Won confirmed that two short-range missile tests from an east coast launch pad followed.

Yonhap reported that three missile tests were carried out Monday, and two more Tuesday.

North Korea's neighbors and their allies scrambled to galvanize support for strong, united response to Pyongyang's nuclear belligerence.

President Barack Obama and South Korea's Lee Myung-bak "agreed that the test was a reckless violation of international law that compels action in response," the White House said in a statement after the leaders spoke by telephone. They also vowed to "seek and support a strong United Nations Security Council resolution with concrete measures to curtail North Korea's nuclear and missile activities."

Obama also spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, the White House said, with the leaders agreeing to step up coordination with South Korea, China and Russia.

Obama reiterated the U.S. commitment to defend both South Korean and Japan, U.S. and South Korean officials said.

North Korea responded by accusing the U.S. of hostility, and said Tuesday that its army and people were ready to defeat any American invasion.

"The current U.S. administration is following in the footsteps of the previous Bush administration's reckless policy of militarily stifling North Korea," the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in commentary carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.

In Japan, which suffered the devastation of two atomic bombs in 1945, the lower house of parliament quickly passed an unanimous resolution condemning the test and demanding that North Korea give up its nuclear program, a house spokeswoman said.

"This reckless act, along with the previous missile launch, threatened peace and stability in the region, including Japan," the resolution said.

"North Korea's repeated nuclear tests posed a grave challenge to international nuclear nonproliferation," it said. "Japan, the only nation to suffer atomic attacks, cannot tolerate this." Japan is considering tightening sanctions against North Korea, the statement said.

Russia, which called the test a "serious blow" to the effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, suspended a Russia-North Korean intergovernmental trade and economic commission, apparently in response to the nuclear test. The slap on the wrist was a telling indication that Moscow, once a key backer of North Korea, was unhappy with Pyongyang.

Seoul reacted to the nuclear test by joining the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, joining 94 nations seeking to intercept ships suspected of carrying nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, materials to make them, or missiles to deliver them.

North Korea for years has warned the South against joining the U.S.-led blockade. The Rodong Sinmun last week said South Korea's participation would be "nothing but a gambit to conceal their belligerence and justify a new northward invasion scheme."

Joining the PSI would end in Seoul's "self-destruction" it said.

In Beijing, the defense chiefs of South Korea and China were holding a security meeting Tuesday, South Korean officials said.

South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee and China's Gen. Liang Guanglie were expected to discuss ways to respond to the nuclear test, Cho Baek-sang, international policy director at the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul, was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

China said Monday it "resolutely opposed" North Korea's test and called on Pyongyang to return to talks on ending its atomic programs.
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Fox News Channel: N. Korea Ignores World, Tests More Missiles

Kim Jong-Il may soon be Kim Jong-dead, so for the moment, I smell a power struggle inside that country between "hardliners" and "moderates", so to speak. Should no one be in control over the next several weeks, this power struggle might very well turn into a train wreck.
 
North Korea warns of attack if ships checked

North Korea, facing international sanction for this week's nuclear test, threatened on Wednesday to attack the South after Seoul joined a U.S.-led initiative to check vessels suspected of carrying equipment for weapons of mass destruction.

A North Korean army spokesman also said the country was no longer bound by the armistice signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War because Washington had ignored its responsibility as a signatory by drawing South Korea into its naval initiative.

The threat comes after South Korean media reported earlier that Pyongyang had restarted a plant that makes weapons-grade plutonium.

"Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels including search and seizure will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty and we will immediately respond with a powerful military strike," the spokesman for the North's army was quoted as saying by the official KCNA news agency.

South Korea announced on Tuesday it was joining the naval exercise, called the Proliferation Security Initiative.

Pyongyang also appeared to have fired a third short-range missile late on Tuesday after it added to tensions with a launch of two others earlier in the day, the South's Yonhap news agency quoted a unnamed government source as saying.

U.S. President Barack Obama is working to form a united response to Monday's nuclear test, widely denounced as a major threat to stability that violates U.N. resolutions and brings the reclusive North closer to having a reliable nuclear bomb.

The secretive state appears to have made good on a threat issued in April of restarting a facility at its Yongbyon nuclear plant that extracts plutonium, South Korea's largest newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported.

"There are various indications that reprocessing facilities in Yongbyon resumed operation (and) have been detected by U.S. surveillance satellite, and these including steam coming out of the facility," it quoted an unnamed government source as saying.

The Soviet-era Yongbyon plant was being taken apart under a six-country disarmament-for-aid deal and there were no signs yet that the North, which conducted its only prior nuclear test in October 2006, was again separating plutonium.

Seoul's financial markets, which had fallen in the wake of the nuclear test, rose on Wednesday though traders said investors were still nervous about when the North would try to be more provocative and ratchet up tension in the region.

Analysts say Pyongyang's military grandstanding is partly aimed at tightening leader Kim Jong-il's grip on power so he can better engineer his succession and divert attention from the country's weak economy, which has fallen into near ruin since he took over in 1994.

Many speculate Kim's suspected stroke in August raised concerns about succession and he wants his third son to be the next leader of Asia's only communist dynasty.

MILITARY THREATS

The country, which has a history of using military threats to squeeze concessions out of global powers, may have ramped up its provocations early in Obama's presidency in order to have more cards to play during his time in office.

There may be little the international community can do to deter the North, which has been punished for years by sanctions and is so poor it relies on aid to feed its 23 million people.

A U.S. Treasury Department official said it was weighing possible action to isolate the North financially.

A 2005 U.S. clampdown on a Macau bank suspected of laundering money for Pyongyang effectively cut the country off from the international banking system.

Japan's upper house of parliament denounced the test and said in a resolution the government should step up its sanctions.

North Koreans celebrated, with a rally in the capital of top cadres, KCNA said.

"The nuclear test was a grand undertaking to protect the supreme interests of the DPRK (North Korea) and defend the dignity and sovereignty of the country and nation," it quoted a communist party official as saying.

North Korea's meager supply of fissile material is likely down to enough for five to seven bombs after Monday's test, experts have said. It could probably extract enough plutonium from spent rods at the plant for another bomb's worth of plutonium by the end of this year.

The North's next step may to be resume operations at all of Yongbyon, with experts saying it could take the North up to a year to reverse disablement steps. Once running, it can produce enough plutonium for a bomb a year.

The test raised concern about Pyongyang spreading its weapons to other countries and groups. The United States has accused it of trying try to sell nuclear know-how to Syria and others.

The hermit state has also threatened to launch a long-range ballistic missile if the Security Council does not apologize for tightening sanctions to punish it for an April launch widely seen as a missile test that violated U.N. measures.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090527/wl_nm/us_korea_north_37

Analysis: NKorea's bomb test adds to atomic threat

North Korea's nuclear test makes it no likelier that the regime will actually launch a nuclear attack, but it adds a scary dimension to another threat: the defiant North as a facilitator of the atomic ambitions of others, potentially even terrorists.

It also presents another major security crisis for President Barack Obama, already saddled with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a nuclear problem with Iran.

Obama assured the president of South Korea and the prime minister of Japan that the U.S. remains committed to the defense of their nations, the White House said in a statement following Obama's calls to the leaders Monday night.

Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak "agreed that the test was a reckless violation of international law that compels action in response," the White House said. "They agreed to work closely together to seek and support a strong United Nations Security Council resolution with concrete measures to curtail North Korea's nuclear and missile activities."

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that North Korea had test-fired two short-range missiles Tuesday after test-firing three short-range missiles Monday.

It's far from clear what diplomatic or other action the world community will take. So far, nothing they've done has worked.

At an earlier juncture of the long-running struggle to put a lid on North Korea's nuclear ambitions, the administration of President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s discussed with urgency the possibility of taking military action. That seems less likely now, with the North evidently nuclear-armed and the international community focused first on continuing the search for a nonmilitary solution.

Meeting in emergency session in New York, the U.N. Security Council on Monday condemned North Korea's nuclear test as a clear violation of a previous U.N. resolution banning such testing. The council said it would begin work immediately on a new legally binding resolution.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Tuesday that the resolution "will have teeth in it, and I expect additional sanctions.

"The pressure will increase on North Korea economically and otherwise, and North Korea will recognize that its actions have only left it further isolated, and further debilitated," Rice said on CBS' "The Early Show."

The North's announcement that it conducted its second underground test of a nuclear device drew quick condemnation across the globe, including from its big neighbor and traditional ally, China. The Obama administration, which said the North's action invited stronger, unspecified international pressure, has consistently called for Korean denuclearization but seemed not to have anticipated a deepening nuclear crisis.

Just two weeks ago, the administration's special envoy for disarmament talks with North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, said during a visit to Asian capitals that "everyone is feeling relatively relaxed about where we are at this point in the process." If so, they are no longer.

North Korea conducted its first atomic test in 2006 and is thought to have enough plutonium to make at least a half-dozen nuclear bombs. It also is developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, in defiance of U.N. actions.

One of the first estimates of the size of Monday's nuclear explosion came from the Russian defense ministry, which put the yield at between 10 and 20 kilotons — comparable to the U.S. bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945. But a senior U.S. administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it appeared the explosive yield was much smaller, perhaps a few kilotons. The official said more technical analysis would be done in coming days.

The administration official also disclosed that North Korea notified the State Department less than one hour before the explosion that it intended to conduct a nuclear test at an unspecified time. The U.S. then notified China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, the official said.

The United States could still try to resuscitate so-called six-party talks with the North as well as work with other members of the United Nations. North Korea has vowed not to resume participation in the six-party talks with the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China and Russia.

The Bush administration worked hard to get China, in particular, to press the North Koreans to denuclearize, and it seems likely that Obama will push equally hard with Beijing, which sided with the North Koreans against U.S. and United Nations forces during the 1950-53 Korean War. In recent years the Chinese have openly criticized the North Koreans for the nuclear arms program.

Two of the main worries about North Korea are left unsaid: Would it use a nuclear bomb to attack a neighbor or the United States? And might it continue an established pattern of selling nuclear wherewithal and missiles to foreign buyers?

Graham Allison, an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and now director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, said Monday that the international community regularly underestimates North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's willingness to do the unexpected.

"Could this guy believe he could sell a nuclear bomb to Osama bin Laden?" Allison asked in a phone interview. "Why not?"
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090526/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_us_north_korea_analysis
 
Well, North Korea has said they aren't bound by the Armstice that was agreed to in 1953 (to stop the fighting then)....and they have threatened to strike the South Koreans and the U.S. military based there if their ships are searched...This certainly can't be good. >.<

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30935610/
 
Nicoleta01 said:
Well, North Korea has said they aren't bound by the Armstice that was agreed to in 1953 (to stop the fighting then)....and they have threatened to strike the South Koreans and the U.S. military based there if their ships are searched...This certainly can't be good. >.<

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30935610/
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Someone needs to snipe Kim Jong before a nuclear war breaks out. Doubt it but yeah you never know.
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The human race will be extinct within the next 200 years. That is my prediction.
 
You know, I wonder how those in Japan who were affected by what we did in 1945 are reacting to this. I know that as a nation Japan's been against it in general because they've experienced it firsthand, but I do wonder, how many over there think that North Korea's government deserves as many nukes shoved up their ass as is possible and then detonated just to shut them the fuck up.

North Korea's acting like the drunk guy with a gun in a western, shooting their mouths off and gesturing wildly with their weapon. We can only wonder what's gonna happen next, though someone is going to have to do something.
 
TTEchidna said:
We can only wonder what's gonna happen next, though someone is going to have to do something.
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Well that drunk guy in the west does whats only proper and he banfs a couple of prostitues. So if North Korea does the same they will pretty much fuck 3-4 countries and start a war.
 
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