ANALYSIS: North Korea as a Nuclear Power

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Odin


Cruddy, Kim has no common sense, he is a psycho, not an evil genius like his dad.

Kim Il Sung has not shown any predisposition towards harming his own self or position.

Psycho he may be - stupid he is not.

The NK ruling party policy is simple - survival against any threat.

[PLATO]

Cruddy, with the conditions in that nation and the economic powerhouse so tantalizingly close in the south, I believe Kim thinks he can militarily force reunification. He is psycho, and he is uninformed on a great many things concerning Western views. Here is an example of how DPRK views Korean war differently:

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,4386,201605,00.html

JULY 26, 2003 SAT

Asia

North Korea celebrates war 'victory'
Gatherings and exhibitions will be held to mark the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War

SEOUL - North Korea has been holding a series of events to celebrate the North's 'victory' in the Korean War as diplomatic moves continue to resolve a nuclear crisis on the peninsula.

The BBC reported yesterday that activities being held by Pyongyang to mark the armistice which ended the 1950-53 Korean War underscored the difference between how the event is seen by North Korea and by the West.

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The report said that a state art exhibition has opened to celebrate the North's 'victory' in the war, and thousands of students held a 'festive gathering' on Wednesday in the capital's War Victory Plaza, according to Pyongyang radio.

War veterans also told tales of the 1950-53 conflict in the North's People's Palace of Culture, the radio said.

The Korean War, which began when the North stormed the South in an unprovoked attack, ended in a stalemate. But Pyongyang officially maintains that it was both the victim and the victor in a war started by the United States.

As part of its 'celebrations', Pyongyang will 'indict' US President George W. Bush and 10 predecessors, going back to Mr Harry Truman, for crimes ranging from genocide to drug smuggling.

Prosecutors at the Pyongyang International Tribunal on US Crimes in Korea said the US must take 'political, moral, penal and material' responsibility for 50 years of hostility, the communist state's KCNA news agency said.

The purported trial in absentia opened in Pyongyang on Wednesday.

North Korea acknowledged that there were no foreign troops in South Korea at the time of the June 25, 1950 invasion, but said the US-led intervention 'prevented the peaceful settlement of the internal problem of Korea', according to historic transcripts.

Tomorrow, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the armistice, the North is planning a ceremony in Pyongyang, while the US and its allies will hold their own commemoration in the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea.

A peace treaty has never been signed, and the tensions created by the war never resolved, fanned since last year by a nuclear stand-off between Pyongyang and Washington.

South Korea and the US have renewed a push for multilateral talks to solve the crisis, amid reports that North Korea's nuclear programme may be more advanced than first thought.

South Korean and visiting officials said in Seoul yesterday that stepped-up efforts to end the standoff could result in talks as early as next month.

Following a meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said: 'I got the impression that it would be in the next few weeks, which would be very good news indeed.

'It would be hopefully in August.'

Experts said indications that real diplomatic progress has been made, however, would come from China, which has taken the lead in bringing North Korea to the negotiating table.

'We hope the talks will take place as soon as possible, but we need to consult with the other sides,' a Chinese foreign ministry official told AFP yesterday.

China hosted trilateral talks with the US and North Korea in Beijing in April at which Pyongyang issued a 'bold' proposal for resolving the crisis in which it demanded a series of concessions from Washington before it would address US concerns about nuclear weapons.

Beijing has recently stepped up diplomatic efforts to bring the parties together through multilateral talks.

The US has been pushing for expanded multilateral talks to include Japan and South Korea while Pyongyang maintains that the nuclear crisis is a bilateral matter between itself and Washington. -- Reuters, AFP

[Drake Tungsten]

Kim Il Sung has not shown any predisposition towards harming his own self or position.

Kim Il Sung doesn't show a predisposition for anything these days other than lying around and rotting.

[GePap]

Originally posted by PLATO1003
War with DPRK is inevitable IMO. They rarely compromise, always demand more, and seldom keep their word. They already sell heavy duty missles to anyone with cash. Why do want to believe that they will do any different with nukes? They, like ROK, want an eventual reunification...with thei vision being a head of state named Kim. Every year they come closer to being ready to try again. With nukes they may feel the urge. We simply cannot allow them to wreck havoc on ROK and Japan. Does anybody have any idea how much of our economy is based on these two places? This is a classic example of the appeasement process when you are dealing with a regime that has no desire for the compromise. Start prepositioning stuff in the Pacific now 'cause it won't be that long.

At this point the NK simply wants survival..I doubt they are stupid enoguh to think they could beat even just ROK by themselves.if unification is what they want, nukes are useless: after all, what do they threatnd to do, nuke the areas they want to re-unify with?

The main issue are the positions of China and ROK: simply stated, both of them have huge reasons to let things just sit ans stew, becuase significant action would be dangerous to both of them.

For China, the porblems are economic: a collapsing NK means millions of refugees their way..and they do not want that. A war menas a collapse of foreign investement for a time, refugees, and the porblems of possible escalation..they would porbably not back NK in any way, shut down supplies into that state to get the war over quick, but it would still be a mess.

ROK has even bigger problems. There are 5 possible directions as far as I see:
1. Let the situation stew as is: yes, things remain at crisis level, but that can be handled politically and the problem deffered til later.
2. Accept a nuclear NK, continue the standoff..same as above for them
3. Have NK collapse from sanctions: huge refugee crisis, ROK bears the vast majority of rebuilding that state...huge economic hit to them for many years.
4. Attack NK beofre they get nukes..deadly war, vast losses of people and treasure, then they inherit a collapsed and bombed out state and have to pay for recusntruction..yet another mess.
5. Attack fater NK has nukes.same as above for NK though Japan then takes a hit most likely (though many Koreans might not see that as a bad thing)

If you are a ROK politician, which of these appeals to you most?

[Q Classic]

this article doesn't give me anything new. it's the same stuff i've been saying all along.

i still say that if someone gave me a nice gun and dropped me off near p'yongyang, i could take care of this situation real easily.

I wouldn't advise war against North Korea in almost any conceivable circumstance. Let them get nukes; the big losers in that deal are China, Japan, South Korea and any other powers doomed to involvement in East Asia because of geography. America isn't an Asian power. We can pack up and go back across the wide Pacific before things get out of hand. I suggest we do that.

after fcuking up east asia? go ahead, you do that. you won't be making any friends by doing so, and trust me, you'll find yourself in a very lonely spot if you do.

As for Taiwain..I still don;t see how a nuclear NK might matter to them: If everyone in the area starts going nuclear, perhaps, but I can not see how the Chinese might take that, and for a while they might be very tempted at a first strike to destroy all Taiwanese nuclear facilities and possible locations for any weapons, and that they can do.

nkorea causes japan, skorea to go nuclear. japan, skorea causes china to increase nuclear stocks. increased chinese nuclear strength propels taiwan to develop nuclear deterrent.

They, like ROK, want an eventual reunification...with thei vision being a head of state named Kim.

since a large portion of the korean populace has the surname kim, you can safely bet any reunified state may have a kim, either southern or northern as the head of state.

I say we do a preemptive strike to distroy the artillery aimed at Seoul and then go knock the SH!T out of monkey-face Kim BEFORE they get nukes. I think preemptive strikes are not morally right but it is better than mushroom clouds over Tokyo, Taipei, and Anchorage.

i'm glad you have faith that we can eliminate many thousands of hardened artillery sites and many mobile sites while simultaneously pinning down infantry forces, all quickly enough that the nkoreans have little or no time to respond.
i don't share that faith.

Cruddy, Kim has no common sense, he is a psycho, not an evil genius like his dad.

he's psychotic, all right. and he's not the brightest light in north korea, which goes dark every night and disappears from the earth when looking down from the heavens.
but he knows what cards he holds, and he knows the rules of the game, and he's smart enough to know how to operate people.

as for korea's politicians, they're handling this situation much like how american politicians are handling the social security and budget issues. putting it off and ignoring it, hoping that some solution will provide itself in the future.
unfortunately, they're incompetent ninnies who don't realize that deferring decision will only make the price more dear when it has to be reckoned.
korea's got a fifty-year compounding interest problem at hand. any dissolution and/or reunification will cost south korea dearly, creating a much greater hit to the economy than east germany did to west. west germany made several mistakes, true, but even if skorea pulled off the reunification doing everything right, it would still end up costing much more.
a peaceful solution would cost less than a military solution, or a fateful solution.
in any case, it's not something any politician over there really wants to ruminate about. they want to reunify. they just don't want to think about the nitty-gritty details, which are horrifyingly depressing.

[Drake Tungsten]

after fcuking up east asia?

No, I want America to get out before East Asia ****s itself up. America has no place in an East Asian war.

you won't be making any friends by doing so, and trust me, you'll find yourself in a very lonely spot if you do.

Better to be lonely than dead (or glowing).

[gopher]

Like it or not, a nuclear armed NK is an almost certainty. With a few uranium enrichment plants across the country, enough HEU (highly enriched uranium, the stuff required for a critical nuclear reactiopn) has been collected for a few nukes. That, plus their Dong ( ) missiles create not only a nuclear weapon, but an impressive platform. Can NK be dissuaded to abandon their weapons? Probably not. Every nation that ended its weapon programs did so in combination with an radical change in government and openess. Such nations as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and even Egypt (althouigh they did not get far, and did not really liberalize much) occured in polar opposite situations than NK is in now.

Solutions? I feel that the ball is in Kim's court now. Bush has absolutly no political capital to spend on any kind of confrontation in Pamunjong. Asia is anxious of US power, and SK are very sketchy on any US moves with the NK's. It seems that the US has been reduced to reacting to Kim's moves, which is not a good situation to be with a man who loved an actress so much, he sent his intelligence assets to kidnap her from the south.

[Sarxis]

They really need to save all their heavy elements for electricity. Any war with them would be short lived. Who are their allies? How loyal can soldiers of a starving and depraved nation be?

[Ned]

Before we declare war, we need a UN resolution. Critically, such a resolution could only pass if China and Russia do not veto it. This is exactly what we need. We cannot go to war if there is a possibility that either would intervene on behalf of or support NK.

But what is the likelihood that the Chinese will support a resolution that will authorize a US coalition attack on NK? Very low, I think.

[Main_Brain]

Knight Rider Newspapers?
Cracks me up :=)

[Ben Kenobi]

erzats

ersatz?

Lots of problems with NKorea. Might be best to play the waiting game. Surely if the people are starving, eventually they will rebel against the government, or the entire system will collapse.

First, we need to give money to the SK to assure them that the US and the West will bear part of the costs associated with building up NK. That's what had to happen with W. Germany after the war, where the US pumped so much money to keep them on the side of the Allies. This way, SK will have little incentive to prop up Kim's regime.

Secondly, what about China? As a huge convential and nuclear power in SE Asia, it is in their best interest to ensure that NK does not develop significant missiles, sparking an arms race.

[Az]

Personally, My opinion is that we can say that the **** has hit the fan, when NK will have missiles that reach the continental US. Then, NK's leadership will feel secure enough to make some real mess, or at least threaten to do so, unless their demands are fullfilled.

[PLATO]

GePap, First all of your 5 directions preclude Kim launching any kind of attack. IMO, he will do that before he allows option 3 to occur. Options 1 and two are obviously most expediant and are the courses that are actually being persued. Both, as you rightly note, will only further prolong a crisis. Q Cubed put it right when he said that 50 years worth of interest were due on the problem...the debt will only get worse and push things toward an option 3 solution. Options 4 and 5 are frightening enough to the West that they are unlikely and as Ned said any UN backing is improbable.

So, if 4 and 5 are out and 1 and 2 have future consequences to deal with, then it boils down to option 3. The question here is weather or not Kim and the militaristic juanta around him will go quietly or will try togain the assets they need militarily. Given the posture of this regime over the last 5 decades I have to conclude that they will launch a preemptive conventional strike on the south hoping for a quick resolution while trying to keep US and the rest of the west out of the fight with the nuclear threat.

The question keeps getting asked weather or not we should go to war in Korea. I believe that the choice will not be ours; DPRK will eventually force one upon us.

Drake, US is an Asian power and should be. A huge part of our economy is tied in with East Asian economies. We can't just take our ball and go home. War there will have, at the least, a devastating effect on our own economy. DPRK knows this and that is part of the reason they push the envelope so far.

Azazel has also nailed another part of why Kim has become so bold. He is counting on the threat of wiping out the west coast to keep US from being involved when he strikes south. It is possible that this threat might work if his first strike is decisive IMO.

Kim's not stupid, but he is desperate. DPRK cannot long sustain the military that they have with current economy. Every day technology makes them less effective. Kim is willing to risk all rather than lose all IMO. And this is what will lead to war.

[KrazyHorse]

Surely if the people are starving, eventually they will rebel against the government, or the entire system will collapse

People have been saying that for decades. The problem is that they're almost certain to develop a significant number of nukes before this happens.

And the death throes of a nuclear nation with a chip on its shoulder will not be pretty.

[KrazyHorse]

PLATO: it is unlikely in the extreme that NK could launch a successful conventional attack across the 38th.