Tag: nuclear weapons

It appears that the US and South Korea has finally come to the conclusion that the country they need to be negotiating with to halt the Kim regime’s nuclear program is not North Korea, but instead China:

Since President Park Geun-hye expressed skepticism over the efficacy of the long-stalled six-party talks and called for five-party talks — excluding North Korea — last Friday, the allies and China seem to be split with Beijing in favor of keeping the six-party format intact.

The talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia have not been held since late 2008. Park thus proposed exploring “various and creative ways” including holding the five-party talks to tackle the North’s nuclear conundrum, her aides said.

Washington has offered support for Park’s proposal for the five-party talks, while Beijing urged the early resumption of the six-party talks that it has hosted — a move that observers say displayed its disapproval of the five-way formula.

“The United States supports President Park’s call for a five-party meeting. We believe coordination with the other parties would be a useful step in our ongoing efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula through credible and authentic negotiations,” a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Seoul said in a statement to the local media.  [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link.

Scott Snyder from the Council on Foreign Relations has an article published that advocates what many in the think tank establishment have been saying that banks and companies doing business with the Kim regime have to be targeted for sanctions to work.  Snyder also calls for a nuclear freeze strategy before negotiating for a denuclearization deal:

To show the North Koreans that nuclear development is indeed a dead-end option, the United States must work with its allies to expand sanctions to target businesses and banks that refuse to cease cooperation with North Korea. North Korea must bear a tangible cost for its defiance of repeated warnings from its neighbors to desist from further nuclear and missile tests. Such a course is a necessary self-defensive step short of regime change to contain North Korea’s continuing nuclear and missile development efforts and to impose a de facto freeze on its program.

China’s cooperation toward this end is an essential litmus test of Beijing’s willingness to work together on a clear and present common threat to regional and global security. Only if the international community can impose a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear and missile development will there be a prospect that Kim might move back to denuclearization.  [Washington Examiner]

You can read more at the link.

More threats from North Korea being made against the US:

North Korea said Tuesday that it is ready to detonate hydrogen bombs capable of wiping out the United States “all at once,” claiming that it has succeeded in developing miniaturized nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s latest nuclear test helped the North “get fully armed with smaller and standardized H-bombs for ballistic rockets and get possessed of ultra-modern strike means for delivering nuclear bombs of various kinds,” the Korean Central News Agency said in its commentary.

The North threatened that its nuclear scientists and technicians are “in high spirits” to detonate hydrogen bombs capable of “wiping out” the whole U.S. territory all at once as Washington moves to stifle the North. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

As I posted earlier this week, it is business as usual on the Sino-NK border which is something that Secretary of State John Kerry says has to stop.  Despite this the Chinese government is claiming there is no “key” for them to use to stop North Korea’s nuclear program.  If the border was shutdown this is a key that would greatly pressure the Kim regime to halt their nuclear program:

China said Friday that it holds no “key” to curbing North Korea’s nuclear ambition, while the United States is urging Beijing to put more pressure on Pyongyang after the North’s fourth nuclear test.

The remarks by Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying were seen as a rare public acknowledgment that China’s influence on its unruly ally North Korea is limited.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during a telephone conservation on Thursday, “There cannot be business as usual” after North Korea claimed it successfully conducted a hydrogen bomb test.

Kerry said he reached the agreement with Wang, after making clear to his Chinese counterpart that the latest nuclear test has proven that Beijing’s approach to the North Korean nuclear issue “has not worked.”

The Wednesday nuclear test by North Korea is viewed as a diplomatic failure by Chinese President Xi Jinping in trying to rein in North Korea.

In response to such a view, Hua said, “I want to emphasize that the origin and frictions of the North Korean nuclear issue do not lie in China. The key of resolving the issue does not lie in China.”

However, Hua repeated that, “China urges the North Korean side to stick to reaffirming its commitment of denuclearization and stop taking actions that make the situation worse.” [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Over at One Free Korea, there is a great update on the current actions going on in Washington, DC in response to the latest North Korean nuclear test.  It appears the one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that the “strategic patience” strategy with North Korea has not worked.  So Congress is moving forward with their own sanctions package which is forcing the executive branch to preempt this by trying to implement their own new sanctions on North Korea.  Whatever the sanctions are it seems to me if it does not include threatening to cut off banks’ access to the US financial system for conducting business with North Korea it will not work to curb their nuclear program:

So far, so good, but then, Nakamura’s sources criticize the President for not trying hard enough to get a deal, which isn’t quite fair. As The Wall Street Journal told us yesterday, “U.S. officials say they have repeatedly tried to engage North Korea in dialogue about its nuclear program in recent months, but Pyongyang hasn’t responded to their advances.” It sounds self-serving, but the record supports that contention. Besides which, the harder American presidents try to “engage” North Korea, the worse their results tend to be.

In this climate, all the administration can really do is shift the focus to its push for tougher sanctions at the U.N. It needs a win in New York to make up for what looks like a general rout of its North Korea (non-) policy in Washington. The administration will probably announce new bilateral sanctions under existing executive orders to preempt some of the momentum in Congress, but I doubt that will appease Congress now. The administration can forget about any new diplomatic initiatives. Its goal now is to avoid a greater crisis, and to keep North Korea from sapping its credibility on other foreign policy issues.  [One Free Korea]

I highly recommend reading the rest at the link.

From the US perspective assuring the ROK that America will full support them against a nuclear North Korea and that they have no need to pursue their own nuclear weapons program makes sense for near term regionally stability.  However, since the Chinese government are the one’s enabling the Kim regime to move forward with their nuclear weapons program, it may take a shock like South Korea and Japan taking concrete actions to move forward with their own nuclear weapons program to get China to take real action against North Korea:

“President Obama reaffirmed the unshakeable U.S. commitment to the security of the [South], and the two leaders agreed to work together to forge a united and strong international response to North Korea’s latest reckless behavior,” the White House said.

The U.S. assurance to defend its ally from escalating North Korean threats came as conservatives in the South started demanding that the country arm itself with nuclear weapons. At a Supreme Council meeting of the ruling Saenuri Party, several leaders publicly stressed the need for defensive nuclear armaments.

“The time has come for the South to have a peaceful nuclear program for the sake of self-defense to counter the North’s fearful, destructive nuclear weapons,” said Rep. Won Yoo-chul, floor leader of the Saenuri Party. “The North is aiming at our head with nuclear weapons, and it is frustrating for us to just respond with sanctions.”

Won, a former chairman of the National Assembly’s Defense Committee, had previously commented that the South should become a nuclear state, but this was the first time he voiced the opinion as the ruling party’s floor leader.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

It appears that David Sanger at the New York Times understands what I have been saying for years, no matter how much anyone want to talk to them, the Kim regime has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons:

From Pyongyang’s viewpoint, there is little incentive to give up the nuclear arsenal. The world is not exactly banging on North Korea’s door to do business the way it is with Iran: The North has no oil, no striving middle class and little strategic value in the modern world. Its greatest power is the threat it poses to one of the most prosperous corners of the globe.

But many also consider it too dangerous to allow North Korea to fail. The Chinese know that if it ceases to exist, the South Koreans, and their American allies, will be on the Chinese border. The South Koreans know that if a conflict breaks out, the North will lose — but only after Seoul, just 35 miles or so from the North Korean border, is a smoking ruin.

So the North Korean strategy is to up the ante and hope the world will acknowledge it as a nuclear weapons power that has to be dealt with. H-Bomb or no H-bomb, nuclear weapons are the country’s insurance policy, and the test was a sign that it has no intention of cashing it in.  [New York Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

The Korea Herald explains why a hydrogen bomb is such an important advancement by North Korea if they did in fact test one.  It all comes down to the explosive power of an H-bomb compared to a nuclear fission bomb.  Could you imagine what one of these things would do if used against Seoul or Beijing?:

Nuclear weapons are classified into atomic, neutron and hydrogen bombs. Among them, hydrogen bombs, also known as thermonuclear bombs, are known to be the most powerful due to their unique structure that expresses explosive power.

Unlike atomic bombs that derive their energy from nuclear fission — the splitting of atoms — hydrogen bombs obtain their explosive power from both nuclear fission and fusion, the process of forming a heavier nucleus from two lighter ones, such as the nuclei of the hydrogen isotopes tritium or deuterium.

While fission bombs can have as small as 1 kiloton of explosive power — North Korea’s 2013 nuclear test was known to have 6 to 7 kilotons — hydrogen bombs’ explosive power ranges into the hundreds of kilotons.  [The Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link.

It looks like the North Koreans are again exaggerating their capabilities.  His comments though are probably more for domestic consumption than something that people internationally are supposed to take seriously:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared on Thursday to claim his country has developed a hydrogen bomb, a step up from the less powerful atomic bomb, but outside experts were skeptical.

Kim made the comments as he toured the Phyongchon Revolutionary Site, which marks the feats of his father who died in 2011 and his grandfather, state founder and eternal president, Kim Il Sung, the official KCNA news agency said.

The work of Kim Il Sung “turned the DPRK into a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation,” KCNA quoted Kim Jong Un as saying.

DPRK are the initials of the isolated North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. A hydrogen bomb, also known as a thermonuclear bomb, uses more advanced technology to produce a significantly more powerful blast than an atomic bomb.

North Korea conducted underground tests to set off nuclear devices in 2006, 2009 and 2013, for which it has been subject to U.N. Security Council sanctions banning trade and financing activities that aid its weapons program.

An official at South Korea’s intelligence agency told Yonhap news agency there was no evidence that the North had hydrogen bomb capacity, and believed Kim was speaking rhetorically.  [Reuters]

You can read the rest at the link.

Considering that the North Koreans will never fully denuclearize this is why they will never back away from demanding a peace treaty with the US first:

North Korea criticized the top U.S. nuclear envoy Friday for urging it again to denuclearize first for a peace treaty.

The North’s foreign ministry reiterated a call for immediate talks on replacing the 1953 Armistice Agreement with a peace treaty.

It was countering remarks by Sung Kim, special representative for North Korea policy, earlier this week at a Washington forum.

Speaking on the North’s demand for a peace treaty, Kim accused Pyongyang of having “the order wrong.”

“Before we can get to a peace mechanism to replace the armistice, I think we need to make significant progress on the central issue of denuclearization,” he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.