North Korea must choose either to have a future or to have nuclear weapons "but it cannot have them both"

there wouldn't be any point in attacking these places (especially china, their ally) because then we would have a chance to strike back without having suffered any casaulties.

Love,
The US

PS Please don't allow loose clippings to blow into neighbor's yard thank you.

It is a testament to KJI's ingnorance and ego that he continues to tempt fate by drawing attention to himself and trying to threaten his neighbours. Though I would be incredibly surprised if any of the afroementioned countries took the initiative before Osan and Kunsan AFBs are both calling for a resupply of munitions.

It safeguards the perpetuation of the current regime, so it is good for everyone who currently benefits from that regime - let's say that's several thousand people. Mostly it benefits Kim, as the feudal Maximum Leader. Much as we hate to admit it, he counts as "anyone anywhere". In NK he counts big time.

someone make the argument that anyone having nuclear weapons is good for anyone anywhere. the only people it is good for are those who possess them and their allies. if it's you = great! if it's not you = sucks.

maybe if our president wasn't a saber-rattling numbskull we wouldn't have unstable governments pursuing nuclear options as self-defense insurance policies.

I was gonna say, what's different about this situation from similar ones recently?

Maybe if our president wasn't a gung-ho military adventurist we wouldn't bogged down in Iraq and we would have the military means with which to back our saber-rattling.

(assertions that Japan will go nuclear are ridiculous btw)

yeah UH but maybe they would. cos they did.

but yes, everyone OTM, don't know why this is "news," you could change a few names and this story could have been written anytime in the past 15 years.

This round of wrangling over the nuclear issue with North Korea has been unnecessarily aggravated by Bush's tough-guy approach. As Monsieur White points out above, he's written a whole bunch of checks his ass can't cash.

I turned on CNN briefly and heard Paula Zahn comment that maybe Japan would take military action against North Korea. WTF?! With what military?

Japan has a very capable military. It benefits from state-of-the-art American hardware and close cooperation with U.S. armed forces. The capability is certainly there, but the will and legality may not be.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/10/08/world/09northkorea.3371.jpg

"A South Korean soldier kept watch near the demilitarized zone of Panmunjom, north of Seoul, South Korea, on Sunday before the nuclear test."

Along with ammunition, he's given a stack of quarters before each patrol...

Japan has moved every 'zig'. For great justice.

The bottom line in international politics is that if you have a nuclear weapon, you count. It's about prestige on the international stage. Kim Jong-Il wants to make North Korea a powerful nation that doesn't have to listen to China or Japan or the US or anyone else - and he can go a long way toward achieving that goal with nuclear capability.

That said, North Korea must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. I doubt if the regime even benefits several thousand people, as someone stated above. It benefits the dictator and his close advisors. The people of North Korea are starving to death, and their totalitarian leader is more concerned with arming his nation then feeding it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cb/Zerowingspecial.jpg/800px-Zerowingspecial.jpg

Japan's constitution prohibits the use of the military for war - it's only for "defense" purposes, so I don't know if Japan would be able to take any action against North Korea without being attacked first. Their new prime minister is talking about amending the Constitution, but for now their legal ability to make war is limited.

I wrote that.

My brain is working on pretty low power (I've been preparing for midterms).

What happens next? The world has become a drastically more dangerous place in the last few hours, and people are posting about flip-flops and Star Trek.

Things will not remain the same. This is a different status quo, and a status quo that the US and other powers in Asia have said will not stand.

I honestly have no idea where this will go. It's certainly a big deal.

At least those countries have far better economies, populations, industries, have influence in the world, etc.

I'm far more frightened of India vs. Pakistan (if that ever flares up again) than Almost All Of The World vs. North Korea.

Not saying this isn't of concern, but to focus on North Korea when there's a full buffet of world anxiety to choose from seems like an odd choice.

Um, no, because they've never been seen as a threat to anyone else but each other.

I don't understand at all the blase response to this, but it's quite like Americans to shrug off int. concerns after concerning scenarios to video games. And Japan's responsive militarization iis not at all "nuts," or unthinkable.

Korean test seen pushing Japan down military path - AFP
by Harumi Ozawa

44 minutes ago

North Korea's announcement that it has tested a nuclear bomb is set to push Japan to expand its own military and stir debate on what was once the ultimate taboo of developing atomic weapons itself.

The test comes with Japan in the midst of expanding its defense posture, 60 years after it was defeated in World War II and forced by the United States to renounce the right to a military.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office just two weeks ago, is a sworn hawk on North Korea who has long supported a larger role for Japan's military alongside its ally the United States.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons test can never be pardonable. But we should collect and analyze more intelligence on the matter in a cool-headed manner," Abe said Monday as he visited Seoul, according to a report.

In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the spokesman for Abe's spokesman, said a North Korean test would post a "grave threat to stability in Northeast Asia" and that Japan will lodge a strong protest if it is confirmed.

Analysts expect North Korea's test to boost the hand of Abe, who wants to rewrite the pacifist 1947 constitution and allow Japanese troops to engage in overseas operations alongside allies.

Despite its pacifism and US guarantees to protect Japan, the country now has around 240,000 troops on active duty and an annual military budget of 4.81 trillion yen (41.6 billion dollars).

A draft new constitution would preserve Japan's official pacifism but acknowledge it has a military -- and not the "Self-Defense Forces" as they are currently known.

Japan has already been taking a larger international military role. It sent a small but symbolic reconstruction mission to Iraq, the first time since World War II that Tokyo has deployed in a country where fighting is under way.
Japan is also believed to be capable of assembling nuclear weapons if it makes the political decision to do so.

But it would be a drastic change of policy for Japan, the only nation to suffer nuclear attack, which has long campaigned to eliminate atomic weapons.
More than 210,000 people were killed in the 1945 US atomic bombings that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"I can't reject the possibility that a nuclear deterrent system would be developed in the region," said Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a professor of international politics at Aoyama Gakuin University.

"Even if the North's missiles do not reach the United States, they could easily put Japan in the firing range and destroy it," he said.

Former prime minister Eisaku Sato proposed developing nuclear weapons in the 1960s as China built the bomb. But his position was rejected by the United States, which provides a security umbrella over Japan.

More recently, a magazine this year quoted Foreign Minister Taro Aso as telling US Vice President Dick Cheney that Japan would need atomic weapons if North Korea pursued a nuclear program. Aso's aides denied the report.

Most Japanese support some revision to the constitution. But the country is sharply devided on how far to deviate from official pacifism.

A recent study by a US House of Representatives committee on intelligence said that Japan -- and also South Korea and Taiwan -- could be driven to pursue nuclear weapons if North Korea tested an atomic bomb.

that...doesn't seem good

https://kr.nknews.org/번역완-에어차이나-북경-평양-노선-5월5일-재개/

중국국제항공(에어차이나)이 오는 5월5일부터 베이징-평양 항공편을 운항 재개한다. 이는 지난 3월 말 NK 뉴스 소식통들이 올해 남은 기간 동안 중국국제항공이 해당 노선 운항을 중단할 것이라고 전했던 것과는 상반된 소식이다.

sorry for the korean article. the english version requires membership

air china will resume flights from beijing to pyongyang starting may 5

that...doesn't seem good

― Karl Malone, Monday, April 24, 2017 5:24 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seems like a first 100 days stunt to me.. but you know its not an accurate measure, or was it really technically 100 days because trump hasnt really been thinking hard about much until recently.

AP story, as written, seems to assume that all 100 senators will obediently go to this briefing, just because all 100 were invited. This is the sort of thing senators resist, because it implies publically that they are not a co-equal branch to the president. The more usual attitude would be "let them come here if they have something to say."

^^^

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/twenty-five-million-reasons-the-us-cant-strike-north-korea/2017/04/21/47df9fea-2513-11e7-928e-3624539060e8_story.html

North Korea has “a tremendous amount of artillery” right opposite Seoul, said Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., a senior imagery analyst at 38 North, a website focused on North Korea.

The Second Corps of the Korean People’s Army stationed at Kaesong on the northern side of the DMZ has about 500 artillery pieces, Bermudez said. And this is just one army corps; similar corps are on either side of it.

All the artillery pieces in the Second Corps can reach the northern outskirts of Seoul, just 30 miles from the DMZ, but the largest projectiles could fly to the south of the capital. About 25 million people — or half of the South Korean population — live in the greater Seoul metropolitan area.

“It’s the tyranny of proximity,” said David Maxwell, who served in South Korea during his 30 years in the Army and now teaches at Georgetown University. “It’s like the distance between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Imagine a million-man army just outside the Beltway with artillery they could use to terrorize Washington.”

About half of North Korea’s artillery pieces are multiple rocket launchers, including 18 to 36 of the huge 300mm launchers that Pyongyang has bragged about. State media last year published photos of the system during a test firing that Kim attended.

The 300mm guns could probably fire eight rounds every 15 minutes, Bermudez said, and have a range of about 44 miles.

“This could do a lot of damage,” he said. “If they hit a high-rise building with a couple of rounds of artillery, people get into their cars, causing huge traffic jams, so North Korea could target highways and bridges in cascades.”

If North Korea were to start unleashing its artillery on the South, it would be able to fire about 4,000 rounds an hour, Roger Cavazos of the Nautilus Institute estimated in a 2012 study. There would be 2,811 fatalities in the initial volley and 64,000 people could be killed that first day, the majority of them in the first three hours, he wrote.

Some of the victims would be American, because the U.S. military has about 28,000 troops in South Korea. The higher estimates for the 300mm rocket launcher’s range — up to 65 miles — would put the U.S. Air Force base at Osan and the new military garrison at Pyeongtaek, the replacement for the huge base in Seoul, within reach.

This prospect of extensive damage and casualties has restrained successive U.S. administrations, however provocative North Korea has been.

“Every U.S. administration, as they have looked at this problem, has said that all options are available. But that’s not really true,” said Baker, who is at the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We really don’t have a military option.”

forgot to quote one more important detail, which is obvious, but worth reminding:

“It would be terrible, but the war would be over [in South Korea], it wouldn’t be here,” Graham said in an interview with NBC.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2089944/opinion-chinas-position-north-korea-appears-shift

Blame for the ongoing nuclear crisis is placed foremost on North Korea for pulling out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Niu further notes that regime security (ie, the survival and ongoing supremacy of the Kim family foremost) has become more important than state security in North Korea. Like his fellow historian Shen Zhihua, Niu Jun seems to acknowledge the possibility that North Korea could become an enemy for China.

Both Niu and Shen remind us that any assertions in Chinese state media noting that North Korea should be satisfied with Beijing’s guarantees of security are wildly overoptimistic and unrealistic. For North Korea, no externally generated security guarantees will ever suffice and its nuclear programme will forge forward.

good article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/instead-of-threatening-north-korea-trump-should-try-this-instead/2017/04/23/70119194-2527-11e7-b503-9d616bd5a305_story.html

The one promising thing about Kim Jong Un is that he harbors ambitions to improve North Korea’s economy, and his domestic policies have already generated modest growth. But his first priority is regime survival and national security, and for that, he considers the nuclear deterrent is to be essential (a rational proposition, sadly). Eight years of sanctions and pressure — but for one spasm of diplomacy just prior to Kim Jong Il’s death — did little to disabuse Pyongyang of the sense that it needs nuclear weapons, or to prevent North Korea from improving its capabilities and expanding its arsenal.

The Trump administration proclaims that the Obama approach of “strategic patience” has ended. But if it really wants to start a new era, the way to do so is not by distracting the public with reckless threats of war, while waiting in vain for Chinese President Xi Jinping to bring Kim to his knees. Instead, the prudent move would be to open direct talks with Pyongyang that start by negotiating a freeze on the fissile-material production cycle, return of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and moratorium on testing nuclear devices and long-range ballistic missiles (including satellite launches). In return, the United States should at least entertain Pyongyang’s standing request for suspension of joint military exercises with South Korea. Kim may be willing to accept something less, such as an adjustment in scale. Or he may be open to a different kind of trade — initiating talks to convert the 1953 Armistice Agreement into a proper peace treaty to end the Korean War, for example. The only way to probe these options is to get to the table. With two months of large-scale exercises coming to a close, now is a good time to do so.

A freeze is just the initial move in what needs to be a long-term strategy that changes underlying dynamics and addresses what each side sees as the core of the problem. We cannot really know what Kim wants, and what he might give up to get it, until we initiate dialogue. But since he took power, there have been strong signals that his ambitions go beyond a nuclear deterrent, that his real goal is economic development. Rather than threaten war or deepen sanctions, a more productive path is to nudge Kim down the same road that the major countries in East Asia have all taken: a shift from power to wealth. If Kim wants to be North Korea’s developmental dictator, the United States’ best long-term strategy is to help him do so. We cannot rationally expect him to surrender his nuclear deterrent at the beginning of that process, but it is the only realistic path for getting him to do so eventually.

Now is the time to jump-start a diplomatic initiative that reopens channels, lowers tensions and caps North Korea’s capabilities where they are. Then, working closely with the new government in Seoul and others, the United States should support a long-term strategy that integrates North Korea into regional stability and prosperity. Because the nuclear program is the last budget item that Kim will cut, sanctions only deepen the misery of the North Korean population, and pressure fails to improve human rights abuses on the ground. The best way to alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people is to give them a chance to succeed economically and help open up their country step by step.

By simply inflicting economic pain, threatening military strikes and keeping tensions high, the United States is playing into the worst tendencies of the North Korean system. Kim’s nuclear intentions will harden and North Korea’s capabilities will only grow. It’s time to reverse course.

'It's time to reverse course' = 'Full speed ahead!' in Trumpsylvania.

his first priority is regime survival and national security, and for that, he considers the nuclear deterrent is to be essential (a rational proposition, sadly).

It is sad for the people of NK that they will be the major 'beneficiaries' of regime survival in NK, but anyone who looks carefully at nuclear weapons inescapably concludes that they are total shite as an offensive weapon under current conditions, but most excellent weapons for deterring attack. If it were somehow rendered impossible for them to used by non-state actors or by irrational leaders, then most of their danger would disappear. Because strategically speaking, their only sensible use is to sit idly and deter attack. In this light, NK is acting strategically and rationally. So was Iran. So is Israel. The awful thing about nukes is that simply by existing they could be used. Sometime. Somewhere. By mistake or by miscalculation.

Thank god for the non-proliferation treaty. Because it is the only tool we have for eliminating the obvious rationale for every nation acquiring nukes.

xp

us republicans and south korean republicans pushed to close the kaesong industrial zone back in 2013 i believe

as far as i understand, when it was closed it also meant that the north korean military would leave the major attack route that led to seoul

the us gov't is not completely ignorant, it just likes to play that card to deceive its own people

NYT possibly reprising its Judith Miller shit

@adamjohnsonNYC
The key claim––since repeated by Vox. Yahoo, UPI & others––is attributed to a nebulous blob of "experts studies" and "classified reports".

"Behind the Trump administration’s sudden urgency in dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis lies a stark calculus: A growing body of expert studies and classified intelligence reports that conclude the country is capable of producing a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks.

"That acceleration in pace—impossible to verify until experts get beyond the limited access to North Korean facilities that ended years ago—explains why President Trump and his aides fear they are running out of time."

http://fair.org/home/nyts-impossible-to-verify-north-korea-nuke-claim-spreads-unchecked-by-media/

yeah I smell bullshit too

so apparently this big meeting at the WH yesterday was basically nothing, just Trump trying to do something important-looking before the 100 day mark

I heard it from a reliable source that he invited every senator into the Oval Office, locked the doors, and then farted.

http://cdn.charismanews.com/images/stories/2017/01/POTUS-Oval-Office-Resolute-Desk-Smiling-Reuters.jpg

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-and-north-korea-on-the-border/article34817039/

“Going ahead with the nuclear test will constitute a serious provocation to the international community, and will bring the most serious sanctions, including oil,” says Prof. Lu. Severing oil shipments to North Korea – which relies almost exclusively on imported crude, most of it from China – would paralyze the country’s economy and military. But mention of this option in China’s state-sanctioned media has suddenly made it a topic of serious discussion.

Such a step would be tantamount to “a nuclear bomb” lobbed toward Pyongyang, says Cheng Xiaohe, deputy director of the Centre for China’s International Strategic Studies at Renmin University. “That would probably be the last economic resort.”

But Beijing has a menu of lesser options that it could consider first, including evicting the tens of thousands of North Korean labourers who have been allowed into China in recent years to work in factories and restaurants.

...

Chinese imports of North Korean gold, iron, tin and rare earths all stopped last year, he said, further evidence of China’s adhering to sanctions. “Big bulk-goods trade of any kind,” Mr. Cui says, “is all now impossible.”

...

The prospect of military conflict doesn’t much worry Mr. Cui. If fighting breaks out, “we will make a fortune,” he predicts, confident that Chinese troops would move into North Korea in order to keep refugees on home soil, thus allowing his business to continue unaffected.

Such insouciance is commonplace in an area where decades of rising and falling tensions have bred boredom – and disdain for those who suggest that this time is any different from previous rounds of anxiety. In Yanji, Chinese tourist agencies have continued booking trips across the border to nearby towns and tourist attractions.

At the Chinese border town of Tumen, tourists still gather on a local boardwalk to gaze across at portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, and at the North Korean guards patrolling the far banks of the river on foot. They feel little cause for concern. “The U.S. is just posturing in order to frighten North Korea,” says Wang Jianbin, a young traveller from China’s Hebei province, who travelled here with a friend.

A short drive away, near the city of Hoeryong, North Korean border guards engage in an intense game of outdoor volleyball, their shouts echoing up to a small Chinese hill overlooking the scene. The game disbands when trucks arrive at the two-lane concrete bridge that forms the border here, a picture of peaceful order.

Then, moments later, an SUV filled with Chinese men in uniform arrives at the overlook. They are bearing binoculars, a reminder that this is the front line of a place that North Korea itself has termed “the world’s biggest hot spot.”

Still, even with recent tensions, “it’s no problem getting across the border. It’s the same as usual,” says Han Bing, another Hunchun businessman with a seafood-packaging factory in North Korea. There is a disconnect, he said during an interview in his store – which was jammed with North Korean shellfish and Russian chocolate – between fear on television and what he sees on the ground. Prices are the same. Business continues.

Besides, he says, the idea of violent disruption in a place pinched between the world’s powers – Russia, China and the U.S. – seems so cataclysmic that it’s not even worth contemplating. “Wouldn’t that mean the start to World War Three?” he asks. That would “not be the same as the Second World War. It would be a nuclear war. And once it starts, the Earth will be destroyed.”

as long as it's not "major major"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LFujE3Y-ZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsJjP3He4h8

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/world/asia/south-korea-election-president-moon-jae-in.html

when your trying to have a nice quiet walk but the revolutionary masses won't leave you alone pic.twitter.com/Qe7JX54Q2D

— sadbukharin (@sadladbukharin) May 12, 2017

https://qz.com/1004330/north-korea-is-sitting-on-trillions-of-dollars-on-untapped-wealth-and-its-neighbors-want-a-piece-of-it/

North Korea’s neighbors have long had their eyes on its bonanza of mineral wealth. About five years ago China spent some $10 billion on an infrastructure project near the border with North Korea, primarily to give it easier access to the mineral resources. Conveniently North Korea’s largest iron ore deposits, in Musan County, are right by the border. An analysis of satellite images published last October by 38 North, a website affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, showed mining activity was alive and well in the area.

China particularly covets North Korea’s rare earth minerals. Pyongyang knows this. It punished Beijing in March by suspending exports of the metals to China in retaliation for the coal trade restrictions.

Meanwhile Russia, which also shares a (smaller) border with North Korea, in 2014 developed plans to overhaul North Korea’s rail network in exchange for access to the country’s mineral resources. That particular plan lost steam (pdf, p. 8), but the general sentiment is still alive.

But South Korea has its own plans for the mineral resources. It sees them as a way to help pay for reunification (should it finally come to pass), which is expected to take decades and cost hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars. (Germany knows a few things about that.) Overhauling the North’s decrepit infrastructure, including the aging railway line, will be part of the enormous bill.
In May, South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport invited companies to submit bids on possible infrastructure projects in North Korea, especially ones regarding the mining sector. It argued that (paywall) the underground resources could “cover the expense of repairing the North’s poor infrastructure.”

Breaking News: Japan warned some residents to seek shelter after North Korea fired a missile, which flew over the country and landed in the Pacific Ocean.https://t.co/URp51s3wUd

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 3, 2022

oops. i meant to bump another north korea thread.