| Submit your comments on this article |
| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Report: North Korea Missile Preparations Ending |
| 2004-10-11 |
| Activity around North Korea's missile launch sites is tailing off, calming fears of a ballistic missile test, a Japanese newspaper reported on Monday, citing government sources. The Yomiuri Shimbun said the Defense Ministry had called back a ship equipped with Aegis radar tracking equipment that was sent when satellite monitoring picked up increased activity around missile and other military bases in North Korea last month. "The series of moves appear to have been North Korean military training," the Yomiuri quoted a government source as saying. The paper quoted him as adding that about 70 percent of the activity had ceased. Japan has decided to move forward to the development stage on a next-generation missile defense system it has been working on with the United States, Kyodo news agency said on Monday. The decision, which Kyodo said was made under pressure from Washington, is bound to face domestic opposition because it will involve a review of Japan's ban on weapons exports. The government will make its final decision within the current financial year, which ends in March 2005, on whether to develop components for the system, Kyodo said. Japan recently decided to spend about 1 trillion yen ($9.1 billion) on an existing U.S.-made missile defense system, Kyodo said. Tokyo has also spent 15.6 billion yen on the joint research program for the next-generation system, which began in 1999, Kyodo said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 I'm not sure what I did to have all that pretty, wasted, yellow space above. Sorry. (Yes, that is a comma between the two adjectives. Stop snickering.) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2004-10-11 10:10:55 AM |
| #2 China has this great, big, beautiful new dam, which unfortunately is already developing cracks in the cement.... |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2004-10-11 6:51:46 AM |
| #1 I'll be more worried about TAIWAN, where mainland China is worried Taiwan's leadership will begin de facto work for SOVEREIGN STATEHOOD. As a matter of strategic military operations, the capture of TAIWAN by any Chicom milfors will allow China to AIRBORNE "LEAPFROG" straight into the Phillippines and WESTPAC-CENTPAC, and cut off potential US Air and Sea links to JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA, and East Asia in general - in addition, a nuclearized and militarily powerful Japan, and ditto a powerful South Korea, especially if capable of militarily damaging interior Chinese territory or targets, only makes conventional-only Taiwan more credible as the "Path of Least Resistance" for China's People's Liberation Army. Lastly, the socio-cultural similarities and sympathies between the mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese cannot be denied, whereas there is historical and competitive animosity still to consider between the societies of mainland China and Japan proper! Of all America's potential enemies during the Gloabl War on Terror, only mainland China possesses the level of national ethos, level of nuclear arms, and available quantitative manpower to exercise both short-term and protractive, but differentiated, militarized warfighting options against America, be it mechanized blitzkrieg to static "people's war" or armed insurgency! |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2004-10-11 5:18:33 AM |