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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| Why should anyone believe North Korean promises? | |
| 2009-04-11 | |
| By Don Kirk SEOUL -- North Korea's latest missile test raises a critical question. Why should anyone consider giving aid to this regime that has already squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on firing off missiles and producing nuclear warheads?
It is not just that such thinking is ridiculous. It's that it has no chance of working. We've been disillusioned again and again. Remember the North-South Red Cross talks of 1972, the harbinger of exchanges of mail, of visits by long-lost relatives? And what about the North-South agreement for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, signed in 1991? No sooner was the world getting comfortable with that deal than North Korea withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Then there was the Geneva framework of 1994 in which American diplomats masterminded an elaborate arrangement for bequeathing North Korea twin light-water nuclear reactors in return for the shutdown of its nuclear facilities. All the while, North Korea was wheeling and dealing with A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, for an entirely separate program to fabricate nukes from enriched uranium. It's mind-boggling to imagine that any one could have fallen for North Korea's promises again, but Christopher Hill, as President George W. Bush's nuclear envoy, fell for two more agreements in a year of talks after the North conducted an underground nuclear test on October 9, 2006. No way, of course, would North Korea reveal all the details of its nuclear inventory, much less get rid of the six to 12 warheads it possesses. The latest evidence was Sunday's launch of a Taepodong-2 missile with a range of at least 2,000 miles. The North Koreans went through an elaborate exercise of claiming the missile was a two-stage booster assembly from which a satellite would be lofted into orbit. They made the same claim in 1998 when they fired Taepodong-1 in much the same trajectory over northern Japan. Then as now, North Korea announced the missile had lofted a satellite into space from which wafted paeans to Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung, "eternal president." It's dubious if the attachment picked up by satellite imagery at the tip of the missile was a satellite. Far more likely, North Koreans were bamboozling the world in a shell game that would be funny if the implications were not so deadly. There's plenty of evidence that North Koreans by now are good at manufacturing missiles. They export short-range Scuds and mid-range Rodongs, the products of Russian engineering. They also are well known to have made nuclear warheads. No one has ever heard or seen any signs of building satellites. So we're left with one reason for Sunday's test: The satellite story was indeed a cover for the testing the Taepodong-2, which had fizzled in a previous attempt at launching it in July 2006. Now what? President Barack Obama and South Korea's President Lee Myung Bak talk about "stern" countermeasures. Nobody imagines a military response. Most analysts expect resumption of talks. When they do get to the table, our side should make one point clear: No more aid that you will only spend on missiles and nukes. That would be the sternest -- and most effective -- penalty anyone could inflict. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #4 Thanks. Yea, some skeptics would tell me I should get out a psychology book and analyze why Koreans are they way they are to foster international understanding, handholding, all that. I just say, they are the way they are, and they cannot be trusted. This is from my direct observation, so if I sound xenophobic its coming from the standpoint that even South Korea is still defined as a third world country by the U.N. due to their numerous human rights violations (doozies, like wholesale, flagrant human trafficking, forced prostitution of minors, ick) So I have no illusions about the Koreas, North or South, they have some way to go in the morality department. |
| Posted by: GirlThursday 2009-04-11 23:28 |
| #3 Dang, GT - don't hold back. Tell us what you really think.... |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2009-04-11 23:17 |
| #2 Koreans are duplicitous, its perfectly acceptable in their culture to have a public face or side one shows to the world, and a private face or hidden side nobody knows. This is the mindset. Being duplicitous is not seen as lying per se. Koreans are also ruthless and stop at nothing to get what they want. I saw many women going after married men with children in the military and these same home wreckers would cry and kick and scream when the GI went back to his wife and kids. She would go ballistic calling him a liar, even though her behavior was gutterball dishonest too. Koreans are not to be trusted, and bat shit crazy too. If I offend anyone by telling what I observed, dial 1-800-Suck-IT. |
| Posted by: GirlThursday 2009-04-11 22:47 |
| #1 Because Madeline Albright says so. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2009-04-11 13:31 |