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China-Japan-Koreas
N. Korea says it will conduct nuke test
2006-10-03
(AP) North Korea said Tuesday that it will conduct a nuclear test to bolster its self-defense capability amid what it calls increasing U.S. hostility toward the communist regime.

"The DPRK will in the future conduct a nuclear test under the condition where safety is firmly guaranteed," the North's Foreign Ministry said in the official English translation of its statement, using the acronym for country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The statement gave no precise date of when a test might occur.

Pyongyang has said it has nuclear weapons, but is not known to have conducted any test to prove its claim. It has not mentioned a nuclear test in previous public statements.

"The U.S. extreme threat of a nuclear war and sanctions and pressure compel the DPRK to conduct a nuclear test, an essential process for bolstering nuclear deterrent, as a corresponding measure for defense," said the statement, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

The North's "nuclear weapons will serve as reliable war deterrent for protecting the supreme interests of the state and the security of the Korean nation from the U.S. threat of aggression and averting a new war and firmly safeguarding peace and stability on the Korean peninsula under any circumstances," the statement said.

Multilateral talks on the North's nuclear program have been stalled for almost a year. Pyongyang has boycotted the six-nation talks to protest U.S. financial restrictions imposed for its alleged illegal activity, including money laundering and counterfeiting.

The North said Tuesday that its ultimate goal is "to settle hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S. and to remove the very source of all nuclear threats from the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity," accusing the U.S. of posing a nuclear threat in the region.
Posted by:.com

#28  In relation to what communisism does to a country.
Cuban/Americans what have managed to go to Cuba to visit relatives and comeback say it would take a long time to restore Cuba to a viable economy. They've been under the system so long without incentives to work, that they've forgotten how.
They estimate it would take another generation to get it back into working condition.
Posted by: toad   2006-10-03 23:52  

#27  They will seal the border, install a 'cooperative' government (Chinese, but with a Korean face), and have said government beg for international assistance.

With all due respects, Pappy, that amounts to nothing more than SSDD (Same Shit Different Day). We must avoid this at all costs. Right down to financing the rehabilitation of North Korea under South Korean rule. Anything, absolutely anything, is better than another round of communist mismanagment in this beleaguered nation.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-03 21:15  

#26  There is also a question about whether China wants to start picking up the tab for bringing NKor out of the Stone Age either.

I don't think they will. They will seal the border, install a 'cooperative' government (Chinese, but with a Korean face), and have said government beg for international assistance.

The only thing from China into the new province would be troops, bureacrats and support equipment. The only thing coming out would be raw materials (at a far greater ratio to 'pay' for the incoming).
Posted by: Pappy   2006-10-03 20:45  

#25  Thank you, mac. Someone needs to make very clear to South Korea that having China on their doorstep is merely a prelude to being absorbed by the communists. This is waaaaay too much like NATO in that America is being depended upon to foot the bill for military protection even as those we shield pursue selfserving and ultimately counterproductive ends. South Korea must be told to pick up the ideological slack or risk being abandoned to the less-than-tender mercies of communist China. Why shelter a country from itself when it actively wants to commit suicide?
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-03 19:01  

#24  Ex-JAG: yes, they are very much aware of the German experience. I've read numerous times over here that even though W. Germany was the richest nation in Europe, and E. Germany was the richest nation in the Bloc, the reunification costs crippled West Germany for a decade and that the Germans are still directing HUGE sums to the East. The next sentence usually goes something like "North Korea, one of the poorest nations on the planet, would cost exponentially more to reconstruct..." Oh yes, they know all about that here and they want no part of it, thank you very much.

Zenster: yes, they are aware of China's having designs on chunks of NKor and they don't like it much, but I don't think there's a great deal they can do about it other than talk. There is also a question about whether China wants to start picking up the tab for bringing NKor out of the Stone Age either. They don't seem at all happy with the idea of several million starving NKors headed in their direction after a collapse.
What these people want is to be Luxembourg. Unfortunately for them their neighborhood is a little too rough for that.
Posted by: mac   2006-10-03 18:36  

#23  sub-launched, ground-hugging cruises are deniable as long as they're cleaned of any ID's (not painted on post-explosion. i.e.: "American civilian baby-killer missile #100547697")
Posted by: Frank G   2006-10-03 16:41  

#22  A successful atomic test would be a huge sales tool in their proliferation drive

Yes -- and they are desperate for cash since we shut down the money laundering chain that brought them their drug etc. income.

Re: stealth missiles, there are to my knowledge (but someone post if I'm wrong) no acknowledged capabilities of this sort in our arsenal. There are several technical issues with this approach, including how to hide the launch from satellites and other observation, IIRC.
Posted by: lotp   2006-10-03 16:34  

#21  exJAG, over here in America, such people aren't called "relatives".

Sometimes they are, unfortunately. An elderly relative of mine, one of the few on that side of the family, had a couple heirlooms she meant me to have when she died. They weren't worth much in $$ but meant a lot to me emotionally. (She was my great-aunt, my mother's mother's sister, and had no children of her own.)

When she died her husband's sister fed him a double dose of painkillers and while he slept them off for two days, emptied the apartment of all valuables and most everything else except his own personal things. He was in tears when I came to visit, because the table linens etc. that my great-aunt had set aside for me were gone -- and those were all that remained physically to connect with my mother. What a greedy, self-serving and small person the sister was!

I confess to a little satisfaction when she found out that all of their savings and their insurance monies were willed to their church, where my great-aunt had been organist for decades.
Posted by: lotp   2006-10-03 16:29  

#20  Do we have any stealth cruise missles or similar in our arsenal? Something that we could deliver with complete deniability?

"Who us?" "Wudn't us, musta been some local car bomb."
Posted by: AlanC   2006-10-03 16:24  

#19  We should accept the facts they have it and deal with it.

I do not agree. I think it would best serve our interests to immediately cripple their weapons test site before they can complete any testing.

Once North Korea demonstrates credible possession of nuclear weapons and the ability to effect actual detonation of them, it changes everything. They suddenly have much more leverage in any talks and their ability to bully Korea increases just that much more.

Of even greater importance is how North Korea would instantly improve its ability to market their nuclear technology to potential clients. A successful atomic test would be a huge sales tool in their proliferation drive. Rogue nations and terrorist regimes would come flocking to their door. We need to break their toys in a big bad way. Better that North Korea's actual ability remain an uncertainty than for it to become a known and bankable factor in future dealings.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-03 16:15  

#18  First off, thank you very much for some on-the-spot insight, Mac. Not a single media outlet is pipelining that story. Maybe you could tell us what the South Koreans think about suddenly having North Korea become the odd province of communist China. That has got to be one of the most likely outcomes of any collapse scenarios.

I'll also go with Alaska Paul on a coalition to rebuild a reunified Korea. It is absolutely critical that communism end in North Korea. If you can even call hereditary Stalanist rule a form of communism. We must put the skids on any Chinese expansionism. This is vital to containment of the Chinese communist threat. No matter how much RasPutin dearly deserves a nice asskicking by his dear fellow communist whores comrades, neither North Korea, Siberia nor anywhere else can be allowed to fall into communist hands.

They awoke one morning to find the relatives going about the house with a sack, stuffing items into it.

exJAG, over here in America, such people aren't called "relatives". They're known as "yet-to-be admitted hospital patients".
Posted by: Zenster   2006-10-03 16:03  

#17  We should accept the facts they have it and deal with it.
Posted by: Jesing Ebbease3087   2006-10-03 15:53  

#16  Thank you Jimmy Carter and Madeleine Albright.
Posted by: DMFD   2006-10-03 15:23  

#15  The SKORS believe it's a zero-sum game. They don't realize it, but they're playing for zero...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2006-10-03 14:47  

#14  It would seem to me if a Coalition of the Willing (Korean Peninsula Division)™ would get together and plan how to finance reconstruction once NORK falls, the burden would be spread around and SKor would achieve its goals and not break the treasury. DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT UTILIZE THE ASSHATS ASSETS OF THE UN.

However, if the SKORS want to play their little appeasement games with the NORKS, they can do it on their own nickel, and not on ours. We are broke.

Just a suggestion for RB'ers to chew on.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Hooper Bay, AK   2006-10-03 12:51  

#13  Hmmm, the timing of this before US elections sure seems interesting. I wonder if Kimmie/China think a test will help the Dems somehow.

Or could just be a sample run for the Iranians who I'm sure will be there taking copious notes.
Posted by: NickVtx   2006-10-03 12:22  

#12  ExJag, that's a very interesting anecdocte; by the way, this view of the West and it's wealth is also prevalent in "developping countries", I think. The West truly is an isolated island.
Posted by: anonymous5089   2006-10-03 11:21  

#11  It's sad -- one (west) German family I know told me of relatives coming to visit shortly after reunification. They awoke one morning to find the relatives going about the house with a sack, stuffing items into it. Their reasoning was that westerners were so well off, it was their obligation to let easterners to literally come take their stuff.

They had zero comprehension that westerners are well off because they work for it, and that this can require considerable effort in a competitive economy. And when this was explained, they got angry and insisted that west German wealth all just fell out of the sky.

My friends got their stuff back, but they don't speak to those relatives anymore, and you can imagine how they feel about paying the reunification tax.

Communism destroys a society forever.
Posted by: exJAG   2006-10-03 11:18  

#10  Really good point, mac -- I believe it. Do you know, is Germany's experience a factor in their thinking? That's where I am, and there's no better way to get a (west) German ranting than to mention the Solidaritaetsteuer (reunification tax). Many regard their cousins as that "giant sucking sound in the east."

Understandably, as all those years of communism gave Ossies a handout mentality -- a grossly inflated sense of entitlement that makes many of them personally infuriating and repulsive.
Posted by: exJAG   2006-10-03 10:37  

#9  And if all the data from a nuclear test gets obliterated by a U.S. strike, the value of the test is...
Posted by: Darrell   2006-10-03 10:31  

#8  In other words Mac SKOR is very much like the Democratic Party in the USA.

As long as the Elite has their good life who cares about the average person or 'minority'....
Posted by: CrazyFool   2006-10-03 10:26  

#7  I'm over here in South Korea. All of you pay close attention to this salient point because this is the real explanation for the South Korean attitude. Nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING, is more important to the SKors than this: NORTH KOREA CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO COLLAPSE BECAUSE THEN SOUTH KOREA WILL HAVE TO FOOT THE BILL FOR ITS RECONSTRUCTION! Anything else given as a reason for South Korean actions by anyone else is simply smoke and mirrors.

South Korea is happy--make that deliriously overjoyed--that it's now beginning to live the good life. THAT IS ALL THEY CARE ABOUT HERE. PERIOD. FULL STOP. END OF STORY.

They don't give a damn about the starving North, they don't give a damn about helping the Americans, they don't give a damn about anything other than keeping the status quo, thereby making sure they don't get handed that ABSOLUTELY F***ING HUGE NKOR RECONSTRUCTION BILL!

They KNOW (and they're right, too) it would sink their country back into the abject poverty they just escaped from and there's no way in Hell they're going to accept that willingly. Their attitude is 100 percent pure self-interest completely undiluted by any impurities such as a sense of obligation to those who saved them from Communism or sympathy for those fellow Koreans living under a maniacal, mass-murdering tyrant. That's why they act the way they do and why anyone who expects anything different is dreaming. NKor will probably come down in the next decade of its own weight and then SKor will have to pay the piper anyway, but they won't face up to that until they have absolutely no other choice.

Posted by: mac   2006-10-03 10:15  

#6  That's true for the current SK gov. But I don't they will win the next elections.
Posted by: ed   2006-10-03 09:49  

#5  Bah. The article on Yoduk Story, a defector's play about the North's brutality, said "South Korean officials tried to shut down the play, fearful of offending the North." You don't have any hands free to build anything when you're busy bending over and grabbing your ankles like that. SKor is ready to assimilate.

Japan, on the other hand . . .
Posted by: exJAG   2006-10-03 09:39  

#4  North Korea:

Desperately seeking relevance in today's world.
Posted by: DarthVader   2006-10-03 09:29  

#3  Kimmie thinks if he can ratchet up the extortion high enough, we will pull a Jimmy Carter and give him lots of goodies. But Bush don't play that game.

More interesting is what will Japan do. Will they find that somehow their missing plutonium has spontaneously assembled themseves into baseball size cores? Same for the next SK government.
Posted by: ed   2006-10-03 08:31  

#2  Hard to figure out the Chinese game; Kimmie has to have their blessings.

Just nutty.
Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom   2006-10-03 08:09  

#1  Air and naval blockade. Kimmie, try getting any Tokyo sushi after that.
Posted by: ed   2006-10-03 07:42  

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