North Korea (Superthread)

[Yrys]

Key nations 'agree N Korea draft', 11 April 2009
Key UN countries have agreed a draft statement
condemning North Korea's rocket launch, diplomats
say.


N Korea to boycott nuclear talks, 14 April 2009

North Korea has said it will boycott talks over its nuclear programme in protest at UN criticism
of its recent rocket launch, says state media. Pyongyang said the talks over ending its weapons
programme were "useless". North Korea also said it would restart nuclear facilities it had begun
to dismantle under an international deal.

The move comes hours after the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the launch, which
critics say may have been a test for a long-range missile. North Korea says the rocket was
launching a satellite.

The statement from the North Korean Foreign Ministry said it "resolutely condemns" the UN move,
which it said infringed on sovereignty and "severely debases" North Koreans. "There is no need for
the six-party talks any more. We will never again take part in such talks and will not be bound by
any agreement reached at the talks," it said. The ministry said North Korea would "strengthen its
nuclear deterrent for its defence by all means".

Setbacks

In a statement on Monday, the 15-member council unanimously condemned the long-range rocket
launch on 5 April and said it would tighten sanctions against Pyongyang in its wake. The council
also ordered the UN Sanctions Committee to begin enforcing both financial sanctions and an existing
arms embargo against North Korea. There had been hope that the unified statement could pave the
way for a return to the talks.

North Korea had previously threatened that any criticism of the rocket launch would cause it to walk
away from the negotiating table.

The BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul says the Foreign Ministry's statement is very strong, but there have
been various setbacks over the six years that the talks have been taking place. There will be many in
the diplomatic community who believe there is still room for negotiation and that North Korea can be
persuaded to return, says our correspondent.

 

[Sonnyjim]

Deja vu anybody?

 

[OldSolduer]

I guess "Hans Brix" will have to inspect some more! ;D

 

[Antoine]

Doesn't look good. Hopfully the North Korean will not take advantage of the Obama diplomatic strategy. Also, they might have a numbers of submarines (exact numbers and submarines qualities depend on the source of information I have found). I hope they are not planning to load them with nuclear weapon, but I have no information to state so, I just hope they will not!

Well again a reminder that we need to keep financing our CF decently despite the bad economical situation.

 

[a_majoor]

Doesn't look good. Hopfully the North Korean will not take advantage of the Obama diplomatic strategy.

Why not; everyone else is!

 

[Yrys]

[N Korea orders UN inspectors out

North Korea has ended co-operation with UN nuclear
inspectors and ordered them to leave the country,
the International Atomic Energy Agency says.

Pyongyang told the IAEA to remove seals and equipment
from the Yongbyon reactor and said that it would reactivate
its nuclear facilities, the watchdog said.

The move came after the communist nation said it was
pulling out of talks on ending its nuclear programme. North
Korea is angry about a UN statement condemning its rocket
launch.  Pyongyang says the 5 April launch was aimed at
putting a communications satellite in orbit.

But other nations believe it was testing long-range missile
technology, in violation of a UN resolution banning Pyongyang
from ballistic missile development.
...
The US called Pyongyang's decision to withdraw a "serious
step" in the wrong direction.  "We call on North Korea to
cease its provocative threats... and to honour its
international commitments," a White House spokesman said.

China and Russia, meanwhile, have urged North Korea to
reconsider its decision, with Beijing calling for "calm and restraint".

Analysts say the action from North Korea appears to be
an attempt to test the Obama administration and to force
it to make fresh concessions.

North Korea carried out a nuclear test in October 2006.

 

[Antoine]

Yup, my  :2c: that many unfriendly countries are closely watching how Obama is handling the situation with North Korea. We are damn lucky that China seems to surf on a peacefull waves with us to develop their economical growth !

 

[tomahawk6]

Time proven Nork strategy. Create a crisis and milk it for all its worth. Meaning they will make concessions after they get an increase in aid.

 

[Antoine]

Lets hope that the elastic won't break (French expression, I am not sure it is translatable) 

 

[Michael OLeary]

More info on the current situation:

North Korea Expels Monitors, Aims to Restart Nuclear Work
    * ASIA NEWS
    * APRIL 15, 2009
By EVAN RAMSTAD and DAVID CRAWFORD

SEOUL -- North Korea said it has abandoned aid-for-disarmament talks and ordered international monitors out of the country, leaving the U.S. and others to figure out a new way to deal with Pyongyang's pursuit of dangerous weapons.

Coming on the heels of North Korea's latest weapons-related test -- the April 5 firing of a missile-like rocket -- the moves show that Pyongyang can resist international pressure despite its poverty.

North Korea ordered International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors out of the country, ending global monitoring of a research reactor at Yongbyon and in theory allowing reprocessing of fuel rods to make plutonium.

The five other nations in the disarmament talks -- China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. -- must decide whether to try to restart the process or take a new approach to the North.

In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called North Korea's threat to withdraw from the talks and restart its nuclear program "a serious step in the wrong direction."

More on link

 

[a_majoor]

Other options that should be considered:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/its-time-to-strangle-north-korea/

It’s Time to Strangle North Korea

Posted By Gordon G. Chang On April 15, 2009 @ 12:00 am In Asia, China, Homeland Security, Koreas, US News, World News | 9 Comments

On Tuesday, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the abhorrent state run by Chairman Kim Jong Il, [1] said it would restart its plutonium facilities and “never participate” in the six-party disarmament talks. Furthermore, it repudiated all agreements to disarm. The blast from Pyongyang was in reaction to Monday’s [2] statement of the president of the Security Council condemning the April 5 launch of a North Korean missile.

Pyongyang’s announcement will undoubtedly shake State Department officials and Obama staffers, but Americans made of sterner stuff will welcome the news. As an initial matter, North Korea’s only plutonium reactor, located in Yongbyon, was supplied by the Soviets in the middle of the 1960s. It is well past its useful life. Let the North Koreans restart it if they dare. There is, after all, nothing so delegitimizing as a self-inflicted mushroom cloud, as Chernobyl taught us more than two decades ago. We were generous — perhaps foolish — to have paid Mr. Kim to close Yongbyon down in the first place. And do you think the nearby Chinese are going to allow Kim to create radioactive clouds that will drift toward Beijing?

Of course, Pyongyang can build new reactors as it announced some time ago. Yet Kim has not made much progress, largely because he does not have the resources to continue their construction. North Korea, now in the fourth year of a downturn, has a gross domestic product so small — about $20 billion — that some buildings in Manhattan boast a larger economy. So let’s see if the Kimster can begin building sophisticated reactors.

And what about Pyongyang’s threat to permanently shun Beijing’s six-party talks? That promise sounds hollow. But let’s assume, for the moment, that the North Koreans mean what they say. I say the end of the negotiations is a good thing. The discussions, which began in August 2003, made relatively quick progress at first. In September 2005, the six nations — China, North Korea, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States — agreed to a statement of principles. Pyongyang, for its part, committed itself to giving up “all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs” and pledged “at an early date” to rejoin the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and submit to international inspections.

The negotiations predictably broke down over verification of Pyongyang’s promises. To get things back on track, the Bush administration, in one of the most humiliating incidents in the annals of American diplomacy, violated American law in 2007 by transferring back to the North Koreans $25 million in dirty money that had been previously frozen in a Macau bank. By now, it is clear that Kim, in the absence of the threat of force or extreme pressure, will never agree to strict inspections of his nuclear facilities.

In the absence of verification, Pyongyang’s promises are worthless. Actually, they have been worse than worthless because they have inhibited Washington from thinking of more effective strategies for disarming the militant state. The United States has been directly talking with North Korea since June 1993. Negotiations since then have been bilateral and multilateral, formal and informal. They have been conducted in the capitals of the participants and in neutral settings. Every conceivable format has been tried at least once. Talks have been everything but successful.

Almost everyone says that diplomacy carries no cost. Yet that is not true. North Korea did not have the bomb in June 1993. Today it does, and its missile program is far more advanced. In short, negotiations have given dangerous despots — Kim Jong Il and his now-departed dad, Kim Il Sung — what they needed most in order to arm themselves: time.

North Korea, despite its statement yesterday, did not end its participation in the nuclear talks and turn its back on agreements because of the Security Council’s weak criticism. Kim Jong Il, unfortunately, inherited the most militarized nation on earth — and then further elevated the position of the army with his songun, or “military first,” policy. North Korea is unique among one-party states in that the ruling Korean Workers’ Party is subordinate to another institution in society. Kim relied on the generals to consolidate his position after the death of his dad in 1994. Now, he is once again dependent on the top brass as he is in ill-health — recovering from one or more strokes last August — and needs its support for his plans to pass power to one of his sons.

North Korea has been trying to weaponize the atom since at least the early 1980s and maybe even as early as the mid-1960s. The generals are not going to give up their most destructive weapon just because Foreign Ministry officials have signed pieces of paper with foreigners. We would like to think we live in a rational age where disputes can be settled by conversation in large rooms. Nonetheless, hostile regimes do not always share our vision of international relations.

Today, there have been the predictable calls for going back to the bargaining table. For example, Harvard’s Hui Zhang [3] contends that we must negotiate because, among other reasons, the North Koreans might sell fissile material or nukes to other countries. Yet while we were talking in Beijing in the six-party context, Pyongyang was transferring nuclear technology to Iran and Syria. The proliferation threat posed by Kim Jong Il is ongoing — and ignored in Washington by both the Obama administration and its predecessor.

So let’s take the North Koreans at their word, walk away from the talks, and strangle their horrible regime. It would be better to do this before Chairman Kim — or some renegade colonel — fires a nuclear-tipped missile in our direction. Or helps the Iranians to do the same.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/its-time-to-strangle-north-korea/

URLs in this post:
[1] said: http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200904/news14/20090414-24ee.html
[2] statement: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=30461&Cr=dprk&Cr1=
[3] contends: http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/09030Zhang.html

 

[R. Jorgensen]

/facepalm

North Korea.... why does it still exist? Seriously.

 

[Michael OLeary]

North and South Korea talks last only 22 minutes

Article link.

(CNN) -- Details emerged Wednesday from the first government-to-government talks between the two Koreas in more than a year.

Tuesday's talks ended quickly -- after 22 minutes -- South Korea's Unification Ministry said.

The two sides were to discuss business deals tied to the Kaesung Industrial Complex in North Korea, which is run by both nations. The talks broke off after the North Korean delegation refused to discuss the release of a detained South Korean worker, saying he was not on the agenda, according to South Korean officials.

The South Korean delegation was not able to meet the worker, or learn whether he would be formally charged with a crime, the Unification Ministry said.

The employee of Hyundai Asan Corp. has been accused of criticizing North Korea's political system and trying to persuade a local worker to defect, according to the Yonhap news agency. Pyongyang has held him at the industrial complex since March 30, the news agency said.

The South Korea delegation said it would take "stern action that could lead to serious consequences," if the matter were not resolved.

The brief meeting between North and South follows the recent test launch of a long-range rocket by North Korea.
advertisement

The launch was condemned by the U.N. Security Council as a violation of a resolution banning ballistic missile testing. North Korea later expelled U.S. nuclear experts and U.N. nuclear inspectors, ended six-party talks and said it would reactivate all its nuclear facilities.

The six-party talks -- involving China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States -- are aimed at disarming the North of nuclear weapons.

 

[CougarKing]

North and South Korea talks last only 22 minutes

Maybe the diplomats realized they were late for watching the concert of the South Korean girl group Wonder Girls, who had held a concert aboard the ROKN assault carrier DOKDO. ;D

 

[Red Hackle]

The top US commander in South Korea said on Wednesday that North Korea has the world's largest artillery force and could rain fire on Seoul should the communist state decide to provoke all-out conflict.
General Walter Sharp's comments came amid rising tensions on the peninsula.

Last Saturday the North's military reminded South Korea that its densely populated capital is "only 50 km away" from the border.


Sharp, commander of some 28,500 US troops in South Korea, said the North has "an old but very large military that is positioned in a very dangerous place, very close" to South Korea.

"They have a very large special operating force. It has the world's largest artillery force that is positioned as far south as possible and that can rain on Seoul today," he told local business leaders.

The North maintains 80,000 special forces and is believed to have some 13,000 artillery pieces deployed along the border, Sharp said.

Cross-border relations are at their worst in a decade after South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak abandoned his predecessors' policy of providing almost unconditional aid to the North.

Pyongyang is also angry at Seoul's announced intention to join a US-led initiative against shipments of weapons of mass destruction.

It says any move by its neighbour to join the Proliferation Security Initiative would be seen as a declaration of war.

Sharp said US and South Korean troops are prepared to "fight and win" at any moment, stressing they "have operational plans prepared in order to be able to meet any contingencies

 

[CougarKing]

Another update:

Kim Jong Il's son elevated to defense post
Updated April 27, 2009 10:50 AM 


SEOUL (AP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's youngest son has reportedly been named to the powerful National Defense Commission, an appointment analysts said indicates the 26-year-old is being groomed to take power.

Kim Jong Un speaks English, likes basketball — and is said to look and act just like his father.
The reclusive, nuclear-armed communist nation's next leader has been the focus of intense media speculation since Kim, 67, reportedly suffered a stroke last summer.

Kim has ruled with absolute authority since his father, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994, leading to the communist world's first hereditary power succession.

Kim Jong Il has allowed no opposition, raising concerns about a power struggle if he dies suddenly without naming a successor.

The eccentric leader has three known sons by two women. The oldest, Kim Jong Nam, was long considered his favorite — until he tried to sneak into Japan using a fake Dominican passport and visit Tokyo's Disney resort in 2001.

The middle son, Kim Jong Chol, apparently has never been a favorite as a possible leader. Kim Jong Il's former sushi chef says in a 2003 memoir that the leader considers his second son "girlish."

But talk about the youngest son has been growing. On Sunday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Kim Jong Un was assigned to a low-level post at the defense commission, the top government body, several days before his father was reappointed as the commission's chairman on April 9.

That reappointment marked the first major public appearance for the "Dear Leader" after his reported stroke. He was gaunter, grayer.

Yonhap, citing unidentified sources it says are privy to North Korea affairs, said Kim Jong Un's appointment means he has embarked on his training as successor and is expected to move step by step into the commission's higher-level posts.

South Korea's Unification Ministry and the National Intelligence Service said they cannot confirm the report.

Little is known about Kim Jong Un. The former sushi chef, Kenji Fujimoto, says in his memoir that the son looks and acts just like his father.

The teen studied at the International School of Bern in Switzerland, a short walk from the North Korean embassy, where classes are taught in English and many students come from diplomatic families.

A recent article in the French-speaking weekly L'Hebdo described Kim Jong Un as a shy student enrolled under the name of Chol Pak, who enjoyed team sports like basketball, went skiing with friends on Fridays and admired Michael Jordan and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

"He had a lot of friends among the children of American diplomats," the school's past director, David Gatley, told L'Hebdo.

Kim Jong Il believes his youngest son has "charismatic leadership" like him, said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the security think tank Sejong Institute.
Cheong said Kim Jong Il's health problems would speed up his naming an heir.

But Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, disagreed, saying Kim Jong Il is believed to be focusing more on consolidating his support base rather than appointing his successor, which would quickly erode his power and "worsen his health condition."

US and its allies have pressured Kim's communist regime for years to give up its nuclear and missile development programs. The standoff intensified after the North's April 5 launch of a rocket it called a satellite. Regional powers argued it was a test of advanced missile technology.

The UN condemned the launch. In response, the North pledged to boycott six-nation nuclear talks, expelled international nuclear monitors and reactivated its facilities to harvest plutonium for atomic weapons.

 

[CougarKing]

Here we go again. The DPRK wants some attention.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/090507/world/international_us_korea_north_test

North Korea seen readying for new nuclear test
Module body

2 hours, 46 minutes ago

SEOUL (Reuters) - There is increased activity at North Korea's known nuclear test site, a South Korean news report said on Thursday, suggesting Pyongyang is gearing up for a new test as it has threatened in response to tightened U.N. sanctions.

ADVERTISEMENT

Impoverished North Korea, whose only nuclear test in October 2006 led to U.N. financial and trade sanctions, could be ready to test another nuclear device in a matter of weeks, experts have said.


"Underground nuclear tests are hard to predict and you can't tell when exactly a nuclear test would be possible, but we think the North is ready to conduct a test in a near future if it wants to," the Chosun Ilbo daily quoted a government source as saying.


South Korean authorities are monitoring increased and steady activity at the Phunggye-ri site in the North Hamgyong province where the North conducted the 2006 test, the newspaper said.


The North also appears to have stepped up construction at a new long-range missile launch site in the west that had been expected originally to be completed by the end of the year, the government source was quoted as saying.


South Korea's Foreign Ministry and the spy agency declined to comment on the report.


Last week, the North threatened a new nuclear test unless the U.N. Security Council apologized and withdrew the sanctions, tightened after it launched a long-range rocket in April.


Analysts say North Korea wants to play out its test preparations, many of which can be seen by U.S. spy satellites, for as long as possible to increase leverage in negotiations aimed at ending its efforts to build a nuclear arsenal.


Talks among six countries, which also include South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, have been deadlocked over disagreement on how to inspect the North's nuclear arms program and how to compensate Pyongyang for dismantling it.


Experts said the North's first nuclear test in 2006 was only a partial success because the strength of the blast was relatively low, indicating problems with the weapons design or the fissile material at its core.


(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by David Fox)

 

[dapaterson]

From the Wall Street Journal, a tale of people who in their free time have compiled a comprehensive list and map of North Korea and its installations

Full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124295017403345489.html

SEOUL -- In the propaganda blitz that followed North Korea's missile launch last month, the country's state media released photos of leader Kim Jong Il visiting a hydroelectric dam and power station.

Images from the report showed two large pipes descending a hillside. That was enough to allow Curtis Melvin, a doctoral candidate at George Mason University in suburban Virginia, to pinpoint the installation on his online map of North Korea.

Mr. Melvin is at the center of a dozen or so citizen snoops who have spent the past two years filling in the blanks on the map of one of the world's most secretive countries. Seeking clues in photos, news reports and eyewitness accounts, they affix labels to North Korean structures and landscapes captured by Google Earth, an online service that stitches satellite pictures into a virtual globe. The result is an annotated North Korea of rocket-launch sites, prison camps and elite palaces on white-sand beaches.

"It's democratized intelligence," says Mr. Melvin.

More than 35,000 people have downloaded Mr. Melvin's file, North Korea Uncovered. It has grown to include thousands of tags in categories such as "nuclear issues" (alleged reactors, missile storage), dams (more than 1,200 countrywide) and restaurants (47). Its Wikipedia approach to spying shows how Soviet-style secrecy is facing a new challenge from the Internet's power to unite a disparate community of busybodies.

North Korea Uncovered: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showthreaded&Number=861907&site_id=1#import

 

[Michael OLeary]

Shared IAW fair dealings, etc., etc.

Reports: NKorea may have conducted nuclear test

1 hour ago

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean media are reporting that North Korea may have conducted a nuclear test.

YTN television is citing an unnamed government official and the Yonhap news agency cites a ruling party member as saying the nuclear test may have occured Monday morning.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has convened an emergency meeting.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Realyed articles at link.

 

[Michael OLeary]

North Korea Says It Conducts Successful Nuclear Test (Update1)

Article link

By Bomi Lim

May 25 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea said it conducted a “successful” nuclear test today, carrying out a threat made last month after the United Nations condemned the communist country’s ballistic missile launch.

“The current nuclear test was safely conducted on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology,” the official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement. It was the second time Kim Jong Il’s regime detonated a nuclear device. The first was in 2006.

A magnitude 4.7 earthquake was recorded in northeastern North Korea at 9:54 a.m. local time today, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site. The quake struck 10 kilometers (6 miles) below the surface about 375 kilometers northeast of Pyongyang.

A USGS duty officer said agency seismologists couldn’t determine what caused the release of energy.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bomi Lim in Seoul at blim30@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: May 24, 2009 23:25 EDT